The house

by Henry Bordeaux

BOOK IV

I
THE EPIDEMIC

I WAS being prepared for liberty by years of seclusion, the history of which, after so many petty rebellions, I shall not set down here. I never became wonted to that boarding school to which I had demanded to be sent in a moment of pride which for nothing in the world would I have disavowed. Yet I passed for a good scholar, whose only fault was a little reserve or dissimulation.

I suffered frightfully during the first absence from home. I used to cry in the dormitory, my head smothered in the covers, until I fell asleep, enwrapped in my sorrow. But I never uttered a word of complaint.

My parents no doubt thought that I had accepted my new life without difficulty. My father wrote to me regularly and at length: no doubt this correspondence made an addition to his burdens for which I was not in the least obliged to him. Self love urged me to repel all his advances. Knowing nothing of Martinod’s insinuations, how should he have guessed that I saw on every side injustice to myself, marks of preference for my brothers? I systematically distorted phrases, sentiments, thoughts. If, in his virile love, he avoided expressions of affection, for fear of softening me, I accused him of harshness. If on the other hand he gave way to his fondness for me, it was simply to deceive me, and impose all the more upon me an authority which I exaggerated to the point of imagining that it was everywhere about me, an imagined persecution which became unsupportable. I usually wrote to my mother, and he never remarked upon the fact. Yet he noticed it, and several of his letters showed that he did. “I know,” he once wrote, “that you do not care to confide in your father.” And mother, who had also noticed it, missed no opportunity of writing about him, emphasising his kindness of heart above all his other merits, reminding me of instances of it, which exasperated me. If he had become aware of my purposed and tenacious hostility, he had no suspicion of its cause; and so the chasm which in the beginning a single step might easily have crossed, grew ever wider between us.

This tension of my mind inspired in me a great ardour for work. I achieved brilliant successes with perfect indifference, successes which contributed to deceive my family, who found in them a proof that I had accepted my new discipline. A good pupil, as my bulletins had it, could not but be a fine child and the joy of his family. Aunt Deen sent me extravagant compliments in bad handwriting, setting all down to the account of my filial affection. From grandfather I never heard.

But what were these positive results in comparison with the inward experiences that were going on in me? Little by little I relinquished all religious practices, building up for myself a sort of mysticism in which I formed a habit of taking refuge. Imagination substituted for my walks in the forest and other wild retreats, and even for my meetings with Nazzarena, a sort of abstract notion of nature and of love in which I found intense joy. I invented elusive landscapes and ideal passions. I was at the age in which one most easily lives in metaphysical chimeras, when ideas are mistaken for affections, and the sensibilities have no need of the spring-board of reality to leap into action. In my dreams I was my own master, until such time as life should make me independent. I had discovered the independence of the brain, and that it can supply all that is lacking. And to crown all, I threw myself into music as into an element which takes one’s own shape; plastic and so to say liquid, it lent itself to all my longings with a docility which filled me with wonder. I had come upon the Freischütz and Euryanthe, that forest where the alleys reach beyond sight. It was more beautiful and especially more vast than the one which long ago had awakened me to the latent life of things. By it I scaled mountains higher and more inaccessible than that to which the shepherd had been leading his flock. And sometimes the sharp pain of the notes that I drew from my instrument brought back to me the unforgettable lamentation of the nightingale in love with the rose: All night long I wear out my throat for her, but she sleeps and hears me not. For her? I did not know her name, I could not perceive her face, but that she existed I had not the slightest doubt. But—strange phenomenon—she was no longer Nazzarena: fidelity itself was but one more chain to break.

With the help of music and of my thoughts I built for myself a palace into which no visitor was admitted: they thought me present, and simply absent-minded, when in fact I had retreated to my solitude, the only place where I was actually myself. This faculty of concentration set me apart from friendship. No schoolfellow was admitted to my friendship; so that my family, against which I was in rebellion, by itself alone represented to me all humanity.

Thus all the seeds dropped during my convalescence were germinating in me after the lapse of a few years. I was free within myself, and no one suspected it. My parents were satisfied with my conduct and my place in school. I had the reputation of being quiet, obedient and easy to manage, and under the shelter of that reputation I let myself glide peacefully into a happy state in which I recognised no other law than my own and which was pretty near to anarchy. I made sacrifices to contingencies, but they courted for little in comparison with my inward joys.

When I went home for vacations my coldness and indifference surprised and saddened my family. Unable to understand them, they attributed them to humility, to the reserve which was characteristic of me, and they multiplied efforts to bring me back to natural ways—only to make me all the more distant. The laugh of Louise, who was now the flower of the house, was as powerless to thaw me out as the martial exhortations of Bernard, at home on leave, which simply exasperated me. As for the two younger children, Nicola and Jamie, I inspired in them a sort of fear, so that they avoided me. After having alienated them, there was nothing for me but to be vexed at their bad dispositions, which I was not slow to do.

Aunt Deen, seeking for a flattering explanation of my changed humour, discovered this:

“He is so superior!”

When my father got hold of me, with a little time to spare, he tried all means to resume the conversation that we had had on the hill of Malpas, that election day. With a secret disquietude which I felt, and which in a spirit of opposition only anchored me the more firmly in my attitude, he saw that I had closed my eyes to all that pertained to the field of observation, whether it were history, the past, tradition, laws, manners and customs, or practical every-day life, and confined myself to abstract reading, philosophy, mathematics, or threw myself still more absorbingly into music—an ambiguous and undefined régime, the mirages of which he dreaded for me. Deeply affected by the departure of Mélanie and Stephen and the approaching absence of Bernard, who was at home merely for a few months before setting out for his destination in Tonkin, where the war seemed likely to be unending, he had hoped to talk intimately with me, to win me back, to guide me. I would listen to him courteously, hardly replying, and he could not misunderstand my silence and my distant manner. He never wearied in pointing out to me the superiority which in every profession, in all the course of human existence, is conferred by a clear vision of realities. How much intelligence, tact, even diplomacy, he must have expended in that effort to win me back which I constantly evaded, I now realise as I recall it all.

Nicola and James, now grown beyond babyhood, used to accompany us in these walks which were such a bore to me, and which recalled others, that I had loved; they were interested in his conversation, which almost became a monologue, and in after years I discovered in them the impress of these teachings by which they had unconsciously profited, while I was determinedly refractory to them. Sometimes I would hear in his voice—suddenly grown imperious—the echo of that which on that memorable day had thrilled me to the marrow, and I almost expected to hear him say, as then, But understand me, poor child. You must indeed understand me—your future is at stake—then the excited voice would calm itself, or would be silent. My father had recognised the uselessness of his effort.

I was able also effectively to evade the solicitations of my mother, who sought my confidence and was troubled by my indifference to religion.

“You don’t pray enough,” she would say to me. “You don’t know how necessary it is. It is the most real thing in the world.”

I had, however, been clever enough to resume relations with grandfather without awakening suspicion. We used to practise together, though he trembled a little and his violin seemed tremulous. Or we would discuss a sonata or a symphony for hours together. Thus I had watched him admiringly years ago, in the Café des Navigateurs, getting off into a corner with Gallus. If any member of the family undertook to join in our conversation we would gaze at him in a superior manner, as at a profane person incapable of an intelligent opinion. Music could have meaning only for us; it belonged to us; and through it we resumed our former intimacy.

I had entered upon my eighteenth year when the event occurred which was to decide my future life. The baccalaureates had covered me with honour, and for a year past I had been preparing for the Central School, with no particular drawing toward it, and even with perfect indifference. A certain taste for natural sciences, purposely abandoned, had for a time given my father the false hope that I should return to the plans of my childhood, and could even be his successor some day. But I had chosen the calling of engineer because it would take me away from home, and permit me to be my own master.

When the time came for us to return home the first figure that we never failed to see on the platform at the station was that of our father, who had hastened to meet us. His face would be actually illuminated with paternal love. I used to greet him as if I had left him the day before, but he would not let himself be put off so, and would always open his arms to me as if he were finding me after I had long been lost. These effusions in public appeared to me very vulgar, and I evaded them most artfully.

It was the end of July. Examinations over, I had come home for the vacation. Having thoroughly irritated me by clasping me to his breast, my father had me get into a carriage, my valise at our feet, and we took the road to the house, which was at the other end of the town, and on its outskirts, as I have elsewhere described.

We were crossing the Market Square when a group of the lower sort of people cast hostile glances at us, accompanied by low growls; then some one cried,

“Down with Rambert.”

I turned in amazement to my father, who had made no reply, and was even smiling at those who insulted him;—oh, not that smile that I had already seen upon his lips when preparing for a conflict, but a smile almost of sympathy, of commiseration. Why this sudden unpopularity? They might refuse to elect him, but they had respected, and above all, feared him. The coachman had already whipped up his horse, a few hoots pursued us. I could not but ask what it all meant.

“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Some poor creatures. I will tell you about it.”

The household rushed to the steps to meet us. It was the usual proceeding, at the return of each absent one. Grandfather alone did not stir, and I heard his violin giving forth its plaintive melody from the tower chamber. Father told of the manifestations of which we had been victims.

“Oh, the wretches!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who by reason of rheumatism in the leg limped a little, but whom years had robbed of none of her war-like virtue. “They came all the way here a while ago; they or some others. Fortunately the gate was closed.”

She had barricaded us against “them,” our enemies.

“Oh, my God!” murmured mother—“if only nothing happens to you, Michel!”

Father explained the recent incident. The municipality which had been elected three years previously had given orders for important aqueducts to be built to bring water to the public fountains. These works had been awarded to a somewhat unscrupulous and even disreputable contractor, who had been put forward by important political influences. It appeared that within a few days father had discovered two or three cases of typhus, both in the hospital and in the working people’s quarter, and he attributed them to the water recently introduced into the city, which must have been either contaminated or ill trapped. If he had been correct in his diagnosis of the origin of the disease he dreaded an epidemic. He had therefore at once laid before the mayor a request for the immediate closing of the suspected fountains, and had asked for a decree enjoining the use of boiled water only, with other precautionary measures. Whereupon the mayor, who was a grocer by the name of Baboulin, being advised by his deputy, Martinod, had refused the request out of deference to public sentiment. Our town, built like an amphitheatre above the lake, was a chosen summer resort of a large colony of strangers. If there should be any talk of contagion the season’s business would be ruined at a stroke. And besides, it would have been an avowal of the inadequacy of those famous improvements of which, according to custom, much had been made to add to the fame of the town. The quarrel had leaked out, and the public had violently taken the side against the prophet of evil.

I listened to the story with the indulgence of a traveller whose duty it is to share politely in the interests of his hosts. This was provincial gossip, quick to be born, soon to die; and I had come from Paris. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant dropped in at nightfall to lend strength to them. Since the decease of the Count de Chambord he had predicted nothing but plagues, wars, cyclones and catastrophes of all sorts. He was in his element now, and scented from afar an odour of cholera which would re-establish his blemished reputation and punish the Republic.

“I hear,” he said to my father, “that they are going to give you a tin pan serenade to-night.”

“A serenade,” repeated Aunt Deen. “I should like to see them! I’ll empty a boiler of boiling water on their heads, since they won’t have boiled water to drink.”

“Very well,” said my father. “I’ll wait.”

After dinner, mother, who was anxious, asked us to recite prayers in common. I hesitated to join in these invocations which I deemed puerile, and I only did repeat them with my lips, without heart, merely, I said to myself, to avoid sowing discord the first day. As for grandfather, he had valiantly mounted to his tower to direct his telescope upon I know not what planet.

About nine o’clock we heard a formidable clamour, but it was far away. For a time it neither drew nearer nor became more distant. The crowd that made it must be marking time. We distinctly distinguished a sort of refrain of two notes, the meaning of which we could not grasp. Suddenly the bell rang at the gate.

“There they are!” exclaimed Aunt Deen.

But no; under the gas jet only one shadow was distinguishable, and that a small one. Aunt Deen and mother were of opinion that the gate should be opened only for a good reason.

“Probably some one is sick,” observed my father; and he himself went to the gate. He recognised in the nocturnal visitor Mimi Pachoux, who had furtively hastened thither to tell us:

“It appears, Doctor, that there are other cases; and they are assaulting the mayor’s office.”

“Oh, truly? What is it that they are shouting?”

“Resign! Resign!”

“Very well, good friend. I am going.”

When this dialogue was reported to Aunt Deen she wanted to reward our labourer’s devotion, but father checked her.

“Oh, don’t be in a hurry, aunt. He ran away from me these last days. He simply anticipates the popular movement, when he is perfectly sure of its direction.”

Then turning to me he asked, “Will you go with me? It will be a change from your studies.”

It was one of those fine moonless nights of July when the stars seem to hang low from the dark dome of heaven, like suspended lamps. We reached the square of the City Hall, which was black with people, all the air resounding with the one cry,

“Resign! Resign!”

We were at the back of the crowd, which was stamping and vociferating before the fast-closed municipal building. There were groups of citizens gathered from the cafés, into which the news had doubtless spread, and there were also many family groups, with children in their arms, the women more excited than the men, some of them demanding that the mayor should be ducked in the fountain. To say truth, such an act would have required considerable good will. To my mind, all those Chinese shadows gesticulating in the uncertain light appeared supremely ridiculous. Absorbed in my own interior life, I took not the slightest interest in their goings on.

Suddenly a light shone forth from a room of the City Hall which opened upon a balcony. Mayor Baboulin had decided to reassure his constituency. But it was in vain that he essayed to make himself heard; epithets of all sorts were flying through the air at him, prisoner, traitor, knave, and others less elegant but even more sonorous.

Another man appeared beside him. My old friend Deputy Martinod, trusting to his popularity and his gifts of speech, came forward. But the hulla-baloos continued, while vituperations even more familiar and offensive were showered upon him. In the gaslight I recognised near me the inseparable Gallus and Merinos conscientiously reviling their old friend.

“You see,” said my father, making no attempt, to moderate his voice, “what to expect of the populace. Yesterday they were hurrahing for them; to-day they insult them.”

I confess that I was surprised to hear him express himself so freely, in that strong, ringing voice which always so disturbed grandfather. Only a few hours ago, as we were driving from the station, hadn’t the populace hooted at him, too? What if they should begin again? We were not behind the shelter of walls nor under the protection of the police. Just at that moment one of the demonstrators turned, crimson-faced and open-mouthed. A light was reflected full upon him; it was Tem Bossette, in person, facing us, full and overflowing like a wine-bottle, gesticulating even more vigorously than the others. The moment he saw us he cried aloud:

“Long live Rambert!”

All around him uprose a great tumult, and to my stupefaction every one was crying, “Long live Rambert!” at the top of his lungs. Father touched me on the shoulder, whispering,

“Let’s get out of this: we’ve had enough!”

A little more and our retreat would have been cut off, and we should have been obliged to submit to the unexpected ovation. Rapidly, before they could get into line to accompany us, we gained a cross street and hastened to the house, where the family were awaiting us. The shadow at the window told us of the disquietude which our absence had caused. Father gaily related what had happened, describing Tem’s intervention.

“Good fellow!” exclaimed Aunt Deen approvingly.

“Oh, he is a worse case than Mimi. The last few days he hasn’t even said good morning to me.”

“What business is it of his?” asked grandfather, who was troubled about the epidemic. “He is in no danger. He has never been a hard drinker.”

“Hark!” exclaimed mother—so quick to be fearful for us.

The expected clamour was certainly approaching; the sounds were growing more distinct; in a moment they would be intelligible.

“Oh, my God!” she added; “what is going to happen next!”

Father laughingly reassured her:

“This time, Valentine, they are cheering. It’s more than I asked for. This afternoon I was only fit for a ducking; this evening I am a saviour.”

How little he cared for public favour! He wore his battle smile, and I thought it very contemptuous. In the mysticism in which I had taken refuge I held myself aloof from all mankind; but so long as I was not obliged to associate with them I was quite willing to grant them all the virtues, even that of consistency. The crowd was already defiling before the gate, singing,

It’s Rambert, Rambert, Rambert,

It’s Rambert that we need!

Was there then only one Rambert? Grandfather, for whom no one was calling, slipped away, I alone observing his movement of retreat; he was probably going back to his tower, returning quietly to his telescope; the planet that he had been observing had not yet sunk below the horizon.

I would fain have followed him, but father asked me to look out. I looked, without interest, at the confused mass whose surges were beating against the gate and the wall of enclosure. It might have been a long, enormous serpent, a long, enormous mole-cricket whose body filled the breadth of the street, and whose tail must have stretched far away, beyond the turn of the road.

Suddenly the gate gave way, and the great beast, like the gipsies long ago, invaded the short avenue and the flower borders. In a moment it was assaulting the house. Aunt Deen, at my side, was torn between the joys of popularity and the instinctive defence of our garden.

By way of checking the onrush of the multitude father opened the window. He was saluted with a tempest of applause, but easily commanded silence, his voice ringing out like a deep-toned church bell:

“My friends,” he said, “we shall do all we can to check the progress of this scourge. Count upon me, go back home, and above all, invoke the help of God.”

Invoke the help of God! But it was he whom they looked upon as Providence! In all that manifestation my mother had been the only one who had thought of praying. Aunt Deen was drinking in her nephew’s words, but their eloquence touched me not at all. I could have wished him to utter a few noble sentiments in praise of science, which alone was capable of dealing with epidemics and preventing contagions; but of science my father had said never a word. At that moment I noticed how large a number of good women were in the crowd, some of them brandishing their babies at arms’ length, as if offering them to my father. No doubt he had been talking for the good women.

Nevertheless he had gained his point. Little by little the crowd was calming down and gradually dribbling away. They passed out of the gate, and the lovely summer night, but now torn with shoutings, slowly gained its empire over the last lingerers in the garden, over the roads and the fields, and gave them back to silence.

Events began to hurry one upon another, the very next morning. The municipal council, responsible for the defective work upon the aqueducts, resigned under general obloquy and contempt.

“There are your electors!” said our father at table. “First rejoicing in the triumph of the mayor and council over conservatism, and now demanding the disgrace of those very men and dragging them in the mud with shame.”

In a flash I saw myself again in the Café des Navigateurs a few years before, drinking champagne with Martinod and his heelers, in honour of grandfather’s candidacy, and far from revolting me, the memory touched my heart. Then, a child, I had quaffed a sort of delicious recklessness, something like that love-languor that Nazzarena, passing out of my life, had left with me, listening to those fine theories which were not very clear to me but were preparing me for liberty nevertheless.

The excitement increased in the town with the increase in the number of deaths, which, however, were still few. The exact figures which my father gave by no means corresponded with those that were printed in the newspapers, or flew from lip to lip. He had forbidden us to go into the town, grandfather approving:

“One never knows how those things get caught—a mere nothing is enough. It’s quite enough to have so many sick persons coming here.”

I had found grandfather aging, when I came home. He was nearly eighty, of course, but he had so long kept his air of youth, the alert step due to his long walks, and even his bright eyes, their sarcastic glint only emphasised by the gathering wrinkles. Now he was growing bent, and his gaze seemed dimmed. Still he clung to life, and perhaps all the more as he felt his strength failing.

The most absurd and contradictory rumours were flying about everywhere, and political passions had free course. An individual had been caught putting poison into the river;—a priest, said the anti-clericals; a free mason, said the others. A frightful mania of suspicion began to run wild. An unlucky fellow with a pimpled face just missed of being strung up, on the pretext of spreading contagion, and was only saved by my father’s intervention:

“Pimples on the face are the only ones that mean nothing!” he had shouted, just in time.

He brought home to us all these incidents and rumours, for we went nowhere; he even carefully disinfected himself on returning from his rounds.

Next, the villages below the water-works thought the contagion had reached them, and were struck with panic, their inhabitants crowding to the town. We could see them passing with their carts, their cattle, their furniture, like fugitives before the face of war. Brawls arose from attempts to keep them out.

Then suddenly the epidemic, which until then had been under control, its ravages greatly exaggerated, took on a disturbing character, whether in consequence of the crowded state of the town and the lack of hygiene, or because the air had really become tainted. The general terror became itself a danger. Pestilence and famine were said to be upon us. Abbé Heurtevant, who, all devotion to the sufferers, yet seemed to breathe in a sort of consolation from the atmosphere of catastrophe, seeing in all this the fulfilment of his prophecies, and who could not but discern signs of divine intervention, was formally accused of sorcery, and was obliged to run to earth in his own room for several days, lest evil should befall him. Mlle Tapinois had given the signal for departure, abandoning her work-rooms, which mother took up without comment. The hotels were emptied, and all the people who could fly from town fled.

The lack of organisation increased the evil. The municipality had resigned and the prefect was taking the waters in Germany. The electors were convoked on a call of urgency. Then came a rush for father. Every day there was a crowd before the gate crying, Long live Rambert! or It’s Rambert we must have. Aunt Deen was never surfeited with this refrain, which was music to her ears. Only he—there was no one but Michel.

I did not see and I cannot describe the despairing town, the shops closed for fear of pillage, the inhabitants torn by party enmity, haunted by all sorts of suspicion, clinging to every superstition, ravaged by bitterness and poverty, and given over to terror. But I did see with my own eyes, at our very feet, there under our very windows, the town entreating one man, submitting to him, grovelling before him, whom formerly they would have none of. The multitude dragged itself in the dust, moaned, uttered howls of desire like an infuriated dog. And not comprehending its distress I despised it.

My father had lost his authority over me, not from having abused it, notwithstanding that I had imagined tyranny in some of his acts, but perhaps—who can say?—for not having exerted it, that evening when he brought me back from the Café des Navigateurs, that day when in the tower chamber I had braved him in defence of grandfather. He had no suspicion either of my first experience of love, which had played havoc in my heart, nor of the intensity of those aspirations after liberty which had been slowly infiltrated into it by all those walks and conversations.

Yet he had felt my detachment from the house, and had trusted to clemency to bring me back. And that clemency had belittled him in my eyes. His prestige had been made up of his never-failing victories, and had I not heard him in mother’s room, uttering the laments of one conquered? By his pain I had measured my own importance. The greater price he set upon the reconquest of myself, the stronger I felt to resist him. Perhaps he would have kept his empire over me had he not showed such an excess of paternal solicitude. Would it be dangerous for a sovereign to take too much pains in training his heir and fitting him to succeed to the throne? Must one put more confidence in words and acts than in the influence which one tries to exert over minds? Each generation differs from the former in the expression of its ideas if not in the ideas themselves. It thinks to create all things anew: life will teach it that nothing is created, and that everything goes on by the same processes.

Now, in the time of danger, that authority from which I had withdrawn myself imposed itself upon every one else. My father had been in charge of the medical service. Now, elected almost unanimously, he was entrusted with the town.

II
THE ALPETTE

OUR father and mother held a council of war, in which the resolution was taken that we should be sent away. The family owned, on the uplands of one of the high valleys, a chalet which we called the Alpette, standing by itself in a clearing in the pines. In favourable seasons we used to spend a month of the long vacation there. A dilapidated stagecoach used to climb to the nearest village in four or five hours. It was not easy to get supplies up there, and we should have to be content with frugal and modest fare; but the air was redolent of balsam, and we should be beyond all danger of contagion.

“The epidemic is spreading,” father told us. “You will all go to-morrow morning except your mother, who will not leave me.”

Perhaps he had resolved to remain alone, but had encountered her refusal.

“That’s an excellent idea,” said grandfather approvingly. “We are good for nothing here, but rather, in the way.”

“Well! I for one shall not go,” declared Aunt Deen, shaking her head. “I am a part of the building.”

Father urged that she had her brother to take care of, but this argument was by no means favourably received.

“He can take care of himself well enough. He is perfectly well. And besides, Louise will look after him.”

Louise urged her desire to stay. We thought she was joking, for she said it laughingly, but she firmly insisted. Couldn’t she be of service, visiting the sick, nursing them even? Wasn’t every willing person needed? Between her and Aunt Deen a debate arose, the unselfishness of which was at the time unperceived by me; but Aunt Deen insisted so hard that she carried her point.

Encouraged by this example, I signified to my parents my fixed intention not to leave town, but to play my part in it also. This was by way of affirming my personality—my personality of barely eighteen years!—much more than as a boast of courage. The idea of death, either my own or that of the others, had not occurred to me. I did not apprehend the slightest danger. No doubt father was the most exposed, both by his profession and his functions, but to me he seemed immortal. I was simply thinking of gaining a little importance.

Father listened to me patiently, and then replied that if I had begun to study medicine, as he had hoped, he should not have hesitated to make use of me, notwithstanding his affection and his fears; it would have been a right which I might have claimed; but that having taken another course, I had no good reason for remaining in a vitiated atmosphere, where I could be of no use, at the risk of succumbing to the disease any day. He thanked me for my offer, but could not accept it. The mountain air would be good for my health, which would improve up there: I was somewhat delicate, I should return stronger.

The calm refusal simply exasperated me. I discerned in it a contempt that was not to be endured, and I persisted in claiming the post as if my honour was involved.

“I regret infinitely, father, my inability to yield in this matter, but I judge that I ought to stay, and I shall stay.”

The words came grandly. He fixed me with his piercing eyes, and did not even raise his voice:

“I rule in my house, before ruling in the town, my boy. I give you this order: You will go to-morrow with your grandfather, Louise and the two younger children. I am in charge of the whole city: we shall see whether my son will be the first to disobey.”

He turned away. So peremptorily had he spoken that a sense of the impossibility of resistance took possession of me. He had been humouring me this long time; he had thought from my reserve that I was indifferent if not hostile, and he cherished the hope of regaining my confidence. Now he suddenly abandoned all methods of conciliation and put me back in the ranks like a mere soldier, not like a future chief. Without caring the least in the world about taking active service among the hospital staff, I champed my bit with rage, as if I had been subjected to the most cruel abuse. Grandfather, delighted with this outcome, consoled me good-naturedly.

“Oho! what do you care? He has a craze for giving orders. We shall be very well off up there.”

Our preparations filled the afternoon. Grandfather himself brought down from the tower his barometer, violin, pipes and almanacs. The repeated journeys put him out of breath, but he would stop for no one. The rest of the packing was of no interest to him, but concerned Aunt Deen, to whom he had long ago given over the care of his clothes and linen. At nightfall Abbé Heurtevant came for a visit. Father was at the hospital, or the mayor’s office, and mother at the work-rooms where bed clothing for the sick poor was being made. Grandfather, with new found resolution, refused to have the door opened, and inquired from the window whether our friend had been disinfected.

Nothing would do but for the abbé to pass through the disinfecting room that had been set up in the house, after which he was welcomed with gladness, and grandfather even offered him his copy of the prophecies of Michel Nostradamus. M. Heurtevant accepted the gift with small enthusiasm; he was acquainted with the Centuries and found them obscure and contradictory.

“Yes, you prefer Sister Rose-Colombe and the Abbey of Orval. And what catastrophes have you to report, Abbé?”

“In the first place, your labourer Tem Bossette died this morning of the pestilence.”

“Ah!” said grandfather, quickly adding, as if finding an excuse for not grieving, “he was a drunkard.”

“Poor Tem!” sighed Aunt Deen. “Had he confessed?”

“He had no time—the complaint seized him like a thunderclap.”

“An alcoholic,” observed grandfather.

My aunt went on questioning our guest about persons of our acquaintance:

“How about Beatrix? And Mimi Pachoux?”

“Don’t be uneasy about your Mimi, mademoiselle; he is helping to bury the dead, and is even superintending the entire force of gravediggers. His zeal is magnificent; he multiplies himself, he is at every funeral. As for The Hanged, I think he is down with the fever.”

“I will go and see him,” said Aunt Deen simply, whereupon her brother looked at her with surprise, and some disapprobation.

But the abbé, with incomparable ease, had already passed from special misfortunes to general calamities. The contagion would be sure to spread, it would not be checked until it had reached Paris. It would decimate the capital, that sink of all iniquities, and would constrain politicians to reflect. It would be as good as a war, in the matter of moral renovation. And the lilies would bloom again.

“They will bloom again,” Aunt Deen did not fail to repeat gravely.

The description of these approaching misfortunes affected grandfather, who changed the subject of conversation.

“I say, Abbé, if you will come to the Alpette to see us, we will give you some Satan bolets, and even if you don’t bring too much bad news, some negro head bolets, which are at least eatable and of a savoury flavour. Or rather, no! don’t put yourself out to come. There is no disinfecting apparatus up there, and you would be capable of contaminating us all.”

The next morning a two-horse brake, ordered especially for us, came to take us and our parcels. Father superintended the embarkation, and hastened it, for he was being called upon from all quarters at once. At the house, whenever any difficulty arose he had always been immediately sought for, all calling in one voice, Monsieur Michel! Where is Monsieur Michel! In these days, all through the city, the rallying cry was, Monsieur Rambert! or more briefly, the doctor, or the mayor.

“Oho!” said grandfather lightly, “he has enough to give orders to now.”

Grandfather climbed into the vehicle first, with his instruments, which he would not let go, though the violin case was much in the way. Like little Jamie, he had all the gaiety of a school boy on vacation. Never had he seemed so to feel the attractions of the Alpette. Louise, on the contrary, and Nicola, imitating her sister, whom she admired, manifested an emotion which for my part I deemed excessive. They clung to our parents with tears, as if it were a case of prolonged absence.

“Come, children,” said father, “make haste and have no fears.”

My own adieus to him were of marked coldness, because of the scene of the previous day. He had constrained me to obedience, and had wounded my pride; I could not forget it so soon; dignity obliged me to assume an offended air.

The smallest details of that departure, upon which my memory has dwelt so much, vainly seeking something to mitigate its bitterness, stand out before me with a distinctness which time has never blurred. Every one was more or less impatient, the horses because of the flies that tormented them, the coachman out of compassion for his cattle, grandfather and Jamie in their haste to enjoy the pleasures of the journey, Louise and Nicola in their sadness over going away, Aunt Deen because she dreaded the tumult of her feelings, and I, to get rid of the uneasiness that was overcoming me. Mother was trying to keep calm. Father alone did so, naturally. When my turn came to get in, last of all, he seemed to hesitate for a brief moment as if he would have detained me, spoken to me. I do not precisely know what it was that showed me this, but I am sure of it. And once in my seat I felt an unreasoning desire to get out again. Was it an instinctive longing for reconciliation? How I long to feel sure that it was! But the feeling was too vague for me to be sure of it now. Taking my place on the same seat with grandfather, I gave expression to my inward feeling by an act of ill humour, seizing hold of the violin case, which chafed my knees, and laying it roughly in the bottom of the carriage.

“Be careful! It’s delicate,” observed grandfather protestingly.

I can still see the vibrating light in the air, and the shining of the road in the sunlight.

“All right?” asked the coachman, clambering to his seat.

“Forward!” ordered father.

And mother added the prayer that she always uttered at each parting.

“God be with you!”

Our heavy vehicle was already in motion, and these were the last words that we heard. Forward, and God be with you; they mingle, become one, always accompany one another in my memory, and whenever to this day I set out upon a journey, it seems to me that I hear them.

At the turn of the road, down below the entrance gate, I saw the three figures standing out in the glaring day, Aunt Deen somewhat massive; my mother’s, more delicate, and the tall, proud figure of my father, lifting up his head. Why did I not call out? The one word, “Father!” would have pleased him, and he would have understood. His figure revealed such force, so rich a vitality, so dominant an authority, that it was of course of no use to humiliate oneself to give him satisfaction. I should always have time enough if I wanted to do so,—later, later.

Grandfather was fumbling about my legs to rescue his violin case and I had to help him. We passed under the chestnut tree that had overshadowed—just one moment—the departing Nazzarena, Nazzarena laughing and showing her teeth. And the house was lost behind us.

I was not slow to forget this uncomfortable parting in the enchantment of my new life in the chalet of the Alpette. For the first time I was absolute master of my days. Grandfather exercised not the slightest oversight. He liked to sit for hours together on a bench on the pleasantest side of the house, warming himself in the sun and smoking his pipe. He took no walks except in the immediate neighbourhood, going with difficulty even to the pine woods, for his legs had become weak and could not carry him far. Once in the woods, he would devote himself to his favourite pursuit, which had not changed, the hunt after mushrooms. He especially pursued and not without success the negro head bolet, which grows well in the shadow of the pines. Jamie and his inseparable Nicola used to go with him, and stoop for him to retrieve the game which he pointed out to them. He preferred their childhood to my youth, and I was not jealous of them. He never tried to establish with them the intimacy that had formerly existed between him and me. He shrank from all fatigue, from any conversation which would have led to discussions, explanations, was contented with trifling facts not open to debate. For my part, I preferred my solitude.

Whether from sisterly affection or because she had received instructions to this effect, Louise busied herself with us even to obsession; she would have cut herself in two to be at the same time with me and with the two little ones. When she had become convinced of the peaceful, commonplace character of grandfather’s conversation, she turned all the more to me, hoping to be my confidant, and to gain a little influence over me. She was only two years my senior, and her conduct filled me with wonder, for nothing down in the town had given any indication that altitude would so totally change her. Pretty, lively, care-free, I had deemed her rather volatile and even a bit capricious—and had been not the less pleased with her for that. At times she would rush at her piano with intense zeal, and again she would not touch it for weeks. She filled the house with her laughter, her charming spirits, her quick movements. “She won’t be one to interfere with me,” I had thought in the carriage. And now, behold her suddenly changed into something like the head of a community or a family boarding house, thoughtful and kindly, but exacting, even arbitrary. One must be punctual at meals, explain his absences, guard his words before the children, not turn either principles or people into ridicule. Had her responsibilities changed her and turned her head? She assumed the place of our parents in matters of conscience, but I gave her to understand that boys didn’t obey girls, and that any directions she might have received did not concern me. She insisted, and almost from the outset we were in a state of tension which was almost conflict.

It was the Sunday after our arrival. The village was two kilometres distant, and only one mass—high mass—was celebrated. Louise informed us of the fact, and at what she judged the proper moment she called to us to set out. Grandfather, who never went to church, raised a disinterested objection.

“Public places are the most unhealthy. Beware of the epidemic.”

“There has not been a single case of typhus in the whole valley,” said Louise triumphantly.

“Very well,” said grandfather, filling his morning pipe.

I then informed my sister that I had planned to take a walk and regretted that I could not escort her. She looked at me in astonishment, such astonishment that I can still see the surprise in her limpid eyes.

“What, you are not going to mass, Francis? There is only one.”

“No,” I replied with my most assured manner.

“It isn’t possible!”

Her eyes, those limpid eyes, at once filled with tears, and I remembered the first mass that I had missed. Pride forbade me to yield, pride and also that new, vague belief which my imagination had built up. Louise pushed Nicola and Jamie before her, and turned to me, her book of hours in her hand, still hoping to move me.

“I beg you, come with us.”

If she had added, “to please me,” perhaps I would have yielded, so alarmed did she appear. She no doubt would have deemed that plea unworthy of its purpose. This time I refused still more emphatically.

“I shall be obliged to write to mamma,” she urged as a last argument.

“As you please.”

She did not, however, carry out her threat. Her sense of delicacy warned her not to add to our parents’ anxieties in the midst of their battle with the pestilence. On the contrary, she doubled her attention to me, trying to win me to her, to gain my friendship, my confidence. With innate art she became an improvised mother of the family, ever trying to bring us together, to group us, warring against the isolation in which I delighted.

When a letter came she would call us together and read it aloud to us. We received letters from home very regularly, and they forwarded Mélanie’s to us from the hospital in London, where she was caring for the sick; Bernard’s from his expedition in Tonkin; Stephen’s, who was completing his theological studies in Rome. Through her the absent ones visited us, and if it had depended only upon her we should have carried on at the Alpette the same life as at home. It was precisely that which revolted me, and I rose in rebellion against the twenty-year-old will which, with unlooked for tenacity, went counter to mine.

To place myself beyond her influence I formed the habit of leaving our chalet with a book the first thing in the morning, returning only for meals. Uneasy about me, she would remain upon the doorstep until I had disappeared, and very often, at my return, I would find her in the same place, as if she had never lost sight of me. Her interest extended even to my reading. The library at the Alpette contained only a few books, some odd volumes of Buffon and Lacépède, a “Dictionary of Conversation” in fifty volumes, a copy of “Jocelyn,” and a few less important works. Even the Dictionary did not terrify me and I would resolutely carry with me the volumes containing biographical notices, or systems of philosophy. I found myself at ease in the boldest or the most obscure of their conceptions. I understood them before I had completed their demonstration, whether they put the universe in subjection to the ego, or whether they put man in subjection to the universe left to itself. Still, I was inclined to believe that everything depended upon our intelligence, and that it alone, by its sole power breathed existence into things, the laws of which were fixed by it. I have never since been able to regain such facility in moving in the abstract, nor such pleasure and pride.

When wearied by these adventures in metaphysics, I would refresh myself with the poetry of “Jocelyn.” It harmonised so perfectly with the nature that surrounded me that it seemed to become its natural expression and I ceased to think of distinguishing between them. How many times, under the pines, have I repeated lines which from that time have been fixed in my memory:

I went from tree to tree and loved them all;

I took from them a sense of tears and wept;

Believing thus, so strong the deep heart’s call.

That answering thrills through all their rough bark swept.

So greatly did I long to feel pervading everything around me, in the soul of the trees or the spirit of the earth, the love which I refused to receive from the family. When I reached the top of some hill, it was in the apostrophe

Oh, mountain tops, pure air and floods of light!

that my rapture found expression. The serenity of the night spoke to me of peace, love, eternity. I dreamed of Laurence, and had no difficulty in picturing him to myself, such a model of precision did his portrait seem to me:

Never the hand of God on fifteen years

Had marked a soul more lovely or more human.

What more was wanting to feed a love which, having no object, created its image for itself?

Another book, however, was destined to enter still more deeply into my sensibility, corresponding as it did with that condition of independence and enfranchisement to which I deemed myself to have attained. Into the pile of almanacs brought thither by grandfather had slipped that copy of the “Confessions” which had puzzled me as a child, and which I had taken for a manual of piety. The innocent Limping Messenger of Berne and Vevey came leading by the hand that Jean-Jacques whom, long before I knew him, I had heard spoken of as if he were still living and we might meet him anywhere in our walks. I had read in school only short fragments of his writings in which I had found nothing personal. I fell upon the narrative of that troubled life, which at first disgusted me. The theft of the ribbon in the house of Mme de Vercellis and the cowardly accusation that followed, certain physiological details which I could ill understand, the title of maman bestowed upon Mme de Warens, produced upon me the effect of immodest confidences, and all alone as I was in the forest, or lying in the grass on the top of the mountain, I felt myself blushing to the ears. My deepest nature resisted, but by an insensible decline I came even to admire the man who could humiliate himself by such avowals; not perceiving their pride I felt giddied by their truth.

After that the volume never left me. Louise, disturbed by this preoccupation, tried to wield some censorship. One evening as I came in from gazing at the stars—those in the South, which I most easily recognised—I found her under the lamp looking into the “Confessions.” She did not see me and I watched her; she suddenly closed the book, and perceiving me, her indignation burst forth:

“You have no right to read this book.”

“I read what I please.”

She appealed to grandfather, who declined all responsibility.

“Oh, every one is free. And at least Jean-Jacques is sincere.”

The love passages excited me, and what rendered them more precious and more seductive to me was the writers lovely way of praising at once the peace of the country and the happiness of bucolic life. In the peace that environed me I felt more plainly the movements of my own heart. I was at the feet of Mme Basile without daring so much as to touch her dress. A slight movement of her finger,—hand lightly pressed against my lips, were the only favours I ever received from her, and the memory of these slight favours transports me as I think of them. I would try to represent to myself the gentle air of those fair women whom no heart could resist, and—shall I be believed?—I found a personal application in a lament which touched my hardly completed and already disquieted eighteen years. Tormented with the desire to love without ever finding its satisfaction, I saw myself drawing nigh to the gates of old age and dying without having lived. When I climbed high enough to see the lake, far away at the foot of the hills, I would repeat the simple aspiration, All I desire is a sure friend, a loving wife, a cow and a little boat, and my growing exaltation of sentiment seemed endowed with innocence. I could have wept for love while eating strawberries smothered in sweet cream.

Thus the period through which I was passing was very closely linked with that of my convalescence, of which it became in a sort the completion. Alone by myself I resumed the walks which a few years before I had taken with grandfather. His friend Jean-Jacques was with me in his stead. These were not the same places, but in natural aspects there was small difference between them. They had the same glamour of wildness, that flutter of vegetation stirred by the slightest breath, the sparkle of waters; and the greater altitude even added a more exhilarating air, farther distances, less accessible to the works of man, a new exaltation. In the mountains the holdings are without walls or gates. No enclosure mars the beauty of the land, and individual ownership is not apparent,—that ownership which, as I knew from grandfather’s teachings, corrupts the heart of man and fills it with greed, jealousy and cupidity. On the mountains field and forest belong to every one and to no one, like the sun and the air, like health. The upper pastures, whither the shepherd who in one sentence had revealed longing to me, was leading his sheep,—now I was treading their short grass. Mountain climbing thrilled me with an ardour for conquest, and with each height gained I hoped to meet her whom I was awaiting but who continually evaded me. She was not Nazzarena, whom I had loved and whom now my dreams disdained; who seemed to me too young, too simple. I thought rather of the unknown lady of the pavilion, or still more of her who had appeared before me on the road, all in white with a hat trimmed with cherries, and a flower-like face, she whose parasol made an aureola about her, and whom I had called Helen since I knew that her beauty was like that of the immortal goddesses.

I was alone, deliciously alone, and in love, with no beloved one. I was perfectly happy, and never realised that I was torturing my sister Louise, whose affection I misunderstood. I was free.

By reason of the difficulty of procuring provisions our table was the most frugal in the world. We lived upon eggs, potatoes, cheese, and on Sundays had the luxury of a fowl. Grandfather was never tired of extolling the excellencies of this fare, and the benefits of pastoral life. It was easy for me to persuade myself of the excellence of our mode of living. I took less and less interest in the news from town that reached us by the diligence. Once or twice, to give us fuller intelligence, they sent up the farmer himself, so that in our hermitage we knew the number of deaths and the ravages of the pestilence. The Hanged, who was dead, had made a most edifying end, Aunt Deen being with him to the last. Gallus and Merinos were safe and sound.

“They are always in luck,” observed grandfather.

The farmer shook his head as if to say that the last word hadn’t been said yet, and that the ravages of the epidemic were not over. Of Martinod he knew nothing; he was still in hiding. Our friend Abbé Heurtevant had resisted but he was undermined; however he still had life enough to predict catastrophes.

“May we go back?” Louise would ask each time. This astonished grandfather and me, for we were in no hurry.

“Not yet, Miss; Master Michael has said like this, that the moment hasn’t come yet.”

A lazaretto had been set up for doubtful cases, the two hospitals were crowded, those who went in or out of the city were examined. A series of edicts had been issued by the mayor, ordering the most minute precautions.

“It’s awful,” concluded the farmer, who was giving these details.

Grandfather declared that we were perfectly comfortable at the Alpette, but Louise was chafing with impatience.

Little by little the days grew shorter. After the month of August, which was very warm, September came, with fresher breezes, and September passed. The oaks and birches in the forest were changing colour among the changeless pines, the oaks turning red and the birches golden. The dried tufts of bushes on the rocks took on a scarlet tint. I was sometimes overtaken by the darkness which rose rapidly from the hollow of the valley, and losing my way was forced to seek the aid of a shepherd in some hamlet whose twinkling lights shone out and guided me.

At last we were informed that the pestilence was abating, and we might soon leave the Alpette. I heard the news without pleasure, intoxicated with liberty as I had become during my long period of idleness. Still, we were to remain a few days longer.

III
THE END OF A REING

ALL night a high wind had been blowing, but by morning it had fallen. October was coming in badly. After breakfast I went out to see what damage the storm had wrought. Autumn had come suddenly. In the woods the oak leaves and beech leaves, leaves red and golden, torn from the trees where they had been glowing like flowers, rustled under my tread, and as in old times when I was little and used to steal out to gather forbidden nuts and crack them afterwards on the fire dogs, I let my feet drag, delighting in their crisp and plaintive chime.

Returning at nightfall I saw a cart standing before the door of the chalet. The headlight was not lighted and it was growing dark, so that I did not perceive till I was close by that it was our farmer’s cart. The horse had not been taken out, but no one was watching it, though some one had taken the precaution to put a blanket over its back.

“Well, Stephen,” said I, entering the kitchen where the farmer was warming himself, for it was already cold on the mountains, “what brings you here?”

We always called him by his first name, as is the custom in our country, although he was already old. His hands were outstretched toward the stove, but he turned his wrinkled, shaven face toward me, the lamp, that moment lighted, revealing it clearly to me.

His light eyes, faded through long service in all weathers, seemed not to see me clearly.

“Ah, Master Francis,” he murmured low, as he rose.

I can not tell why, but the meaningless exclamation gave me a painful impression.

“You haven’t come for us?” I asked.

He was about to reply when we were joined by my sister Louise, who had been told of his arrival. She greeted him in a friendly way and asked what news he brought from town. He seemed in no haste to reply.

“The news is,” he said at last, “that Madame wants you.”

“Madame?” asked Louise.

“Very well,” I observed, “and how soon?”

“To be sure it is too late for you to go down to-night. The beast is tired and it is already dark. To-morrow morning, very early.”

Why such haste? We should hardly have time for our packing. I was about to protest, but the farmer slipped away—he must put out the horse, and get the cart under cover. During his absence I protested against so hurried a departure. In fact the prospect of quitting this place filled me with sadness, and I again lived through the sense of desolation which had come over me in the wood, strewn with the dead leaves. Louise paid no attention and I saw that she was crying. Was she so sorry to go?

“I am afraid,” she said to me.

Afraid of what? Grandfather, being informed of our recall, showed as little enthusiasm as I.

“We weren’t so badly off here,” he said. “We could do as we chose.”

As if he hadn’t always done as he chose! But what was Louise afraid of? By degrees she told us. For the farmer to be sent for us, there must be some one sick at our house, some one gravely ill. He had said “Madame has sent for you.” Then it wasn’t mamma, it could be no one but father. This was what she conjectured, as she confessed to us.

We tried to smile at her fears, comparing her to Abbé Heurtevant who carried thunder about with him and set it off at the least provocation; but by degrees her fear became ours. We waited feverishly for the return of the farmer whom we at once questioned. It was Louise who spoke.

“Father is sick, isn’t he, Stephen?”

“Ah, Miss, it’s a great misfortune.”

“Has he taken the disease?”

“It isn’t the disease that he has taken; it’s a chill and fever.”

Poor Louise burst into tears, calling upon our father as if he could hear her. We had to comfort her, not without blaming her for giving way, the farmer himself joining in.

“The young lady is mistaken. Master Michael is strong. There’s many a one has had chills and fever who is fat and healthy to-day.”

The thought never occurred to me that there could be any real danger. My self absorption prevented my thinking so. What an absurd presentiment that poor Louise was torturing herself with! I could see my father there, before the entrance, just as the carriage started. His panama, slightly tilted, cast a shadow over half his face. The other, in full sunlight, was radiant with life. He was giving brief orders and hastening us into the vehicle because he was waited for at the mayor’s office. How well he could command, and how every one hastened to obey him! I was the only one who thought of withdrawing myself from his power, his ascendency. He held himself upright like an oak in the forest, one of those tall fine oaks that never shed their leaves till the new ones come, that the tempest can never shake, that seem to stand all the straighter and grow tougher by resistance. I could hear his voice ringing out, his voice saying Forward! as in battle. I could not admit that that strength could be overcome. I had counted upon that strength. I must needs count upon it, because later, when I judged best, and had achieved my liberty I wanted to go back, of my own free will, and show my father a little love.

Yet I recalled to mind the day when I had heard him utter in mother’s room a lament over me: “That child is no longer ours....”

But I would not dwell on that. No, no, I must exaggerate nothing. Mother had recalled us because the abating epidemic no longer threatened danger, and because father, being ill, would be glad to see us; she had sent for us for these reasons and for none other....

We went down early next morning, Louise and I in the farmer’s cart, grandfather and the children a little later by the diligence which after all was more comfortable. I turned around many times to imprint upon my memory the picture of that valley, where in solitude I had met so many emotions created by myself, as it were a sort of happiness in which the others had no part. Seated beside me Louise never spoke except to lean toward our old Stephen and ask him gently,

“Couldn’t you go a little faster?”

“Yes, Miss, we’ll try. Biquette is a little like me, she’s not very young.”

He let his whip play around the mare’s flanks, without actually touching her. As we drew nearer to the town my sister’s anxiety increased, and at last affected me. She repeated her contagious “I’m afraid,” and only the fine October sunshine, warming us on our seat, helped me to repel so absurd a presentiment.

We reached the gate at last. No one was waiting for us. How many times had I found father at that place, gazing down the road, and as soon as he saw us hailing us with word and gesture, with all the paternal gladness of his heart! I looked up at the window. The usual shadow was not there, behind the curtain, and for the first time I knew that sorrow threatened us all.

Mother, as soon as she was informed of our arrival, came down to meet us. Louise threw herself into her arms without a word. By a natural intuition those kindred souls understood one another. I remained apart, determined not to understand, refusing to admit even the possibility of a calamity which would leave me no time to play, at my own convenience, the drama of the return of the prodigal son. Mother came to me:

“He talks of you most of all,” she said. “In his delirium he was calling for you.”

I was thunderstruck at this pre-eminence. Why did he talk most of me? Why was I his chief preoccupation, and—my mind leaping forward, even while awestricken at the sacrilegious thought,—perhaps his last?

“Mamma,” I cried, “it isn’t possible!”

But I at once regretted the involuntary exclamation. My mother was the living proof that there was no danger, at least not yet. Of course I remarked the circles round her eyes and her white cheeks, the tokens of nights of watching. But though weariness was evident in her every feature, it was as if it did not exist: one felt a higher will dominating it, or utilising it so long as might be necessary. And by a strange phenomenon, there was now in her manner of speaking, and of treating us, something—I could not say what, but I knew it was there—something of my father’s authority. Visibly, without knowing it, she was replacing him. But if there had been any danger she would have shown her woman’s weakness, she who was so quick to be anxious, and often about nothing at all, she so prompt to hear the approaching thunderstorm and light the blessed candle for our safety! I did not even see the holy light that always when night came down kept watch in her eyes like the little altar lamp in the sanctuary. No, no, if there had been any danger she would have asked for our help, and I would have sustained her with my youthful strength.

“Is what possible?” she replied to my question—thus completely reassuring me. She made no other reply, as if she hadn’t quite heard, but quite simply, in a gentle voice which endeavoured not to give pain, she went on to tell us what had taken place in our long absence.

“He is resting just now. Your Aunt Deen is with him. She has helped me much in nursing him. I’ll take you to his room presently. You can not imagine the effort which these last months have required of him. That is the cause of his illness, after he had overcome the pestilence, when his task was finished. Until then, I had never been able to get him to spare himself. Day and night he would be sent for, appealed to, as if there were no one but he. The whole town waited on his orders, begged for his help. His commands were the only ones that inspired confidence, but the demands were more than human strength could endure, and he did in fact go beyond human strength. They never gave him a moment’s respite—they thought him stronger than the stones that bear up the house, but even stones will break under too heavy a burden. One evening, just six days ago, he came home with a heavy chill. And almost immediately fever appeared. Oh, if he had not so overtaxed himself!”

She checked herself without completing her thought,—or did she not follow it out when she added after a moment’s reflection,

“I have notified Stephen, in Rome. Last evening he telegraphed me that he was setting out. I am glad that his Superior has permitted him to leave—it is a very long journey: we must give him almost twenty-four hours. I write every day to Bernard who is so far away. And Mélanie is praying for us.”

Thus she was gathering the family around its head. I asked,

“Why does not Mélanie come?”

“The Sisters of Charity never go back to their homes.”

“They nurse strangers and may not nurse their father!”

“It is the rule, Francis.”

Since it was the rule she had no recriminations to make; she bowed to it, accepted it, while I,—as soon as it became the rule, my first impulse was to rebel. Timorous as she was when he was there, now with unfaltering presence of mind she was preparing all that would be needed in case of misfortune, without ever ceasing to bend all her energies to ward it off. I felt shame for not having shared her anxieties and for having sought to separate myself from the community of sorrow.

“The fever has diminished,” she went on, going over all the encouraging symptoms for our sakes and her own. “The first days he was delirious much of the time. He has been more calm since yesterday. He himself keeps track of the progress of his disease. I see, but he says nothing about it. This morning he asked for a priest. Abbé Heurtevant, whom he cured, came.”

He himself keeps track of the progress of his disease, and he asked for a priest; the poor woman did not connect the two, so natural did it seem to her to ask the help of God. But I—how could I not connect them? And for the third time I distinctly felt the danger.

We heard Aunt Deen’s step at the head of the stairs; it was growing heavy. She called Valentine! in a subdued voice and we all hastened to the staircase.

“Oh, he is doing well,” she explained, “but he is awake, and he always asks for you if you are not there.”

“You may go with me,” mother said to Louise, then turning to me she added that she would call me next; it wasn’t well for too many to enter the room at once, lest our presence should agitate the sufferer.

As soon as we were alone Aunt Deen, who must greatly have held herself in during her hours of watching, exploded:

“Ah, my boy, if you knew! ‘They’ have killed him—killed him without mercy! The whole town was infected and had no hope except in him. I have seen it, I tell you, those people with their dirty pustules all over their bodies. They would be crying like lost souls, and when your father entered the hospital they would be silent because he had ordered it, but they would hold out their arms to him. How many he has cured! It’s he who saved them all, he and no one else. And the fountains closed, and the water analysed, and the clothing of the dead burned, and the lazaretto set up, all sorts of hygienic measures. Indeed, the very best there are. You should have seen how he commanded everything! Monsieur Mayor, it’s impossible! ‘It must be done by to-morrow.’ But for him there wouldn’t be a person in the streets to-day. And now, now, it’s as much as ever if any one comes to ask how he is! The rumour has spread that he has caught the typhus,—the last one. They are afraid and they abandon him—the wretches!”

Thus she pictured the general cowardice and ingratitude. My father stood out above this disorderly crowd. But Aunt Deen had begun on another subject.

“Your mother is admirable. She has not gone to bed once since his illness. And she keeps calm. You have seen how calm she is. For my part I can’t understand her.”

As she had just left the room above I tried to get at the truth of the case.

“Well, Aunt, is he—”

But I could not go on, and she caught up my inquiry, the impiety of which had burned my lips, as if I had spoken against the Holy Ark.

“Oh, no, no, no! God will protect us! What would become of us, my poor child, what would become of us! A man such as there are not two of in the world!”

Just then Louise, coming softly down, joined us, all in tears. Father was expecting me.

At the door of his room I paused, heavy of heart. By that oppression I saw clearly that he was the essential actor in the inner drama of my childhood and youth, my short but already so important life. I had lived by him but I was living in opposition to him. From the day when I had withdrawn myself from his influence, through all the exaltation which had transported me and yet left me in a state of uneasiness, I had felt myself free, but out of my frame. In what condition should I find him? I was afraid, and that is why I paused for a time before opening the door. On leaving home, after having seen him cheered by the whole town, I had carried away with me the picture of my father leaning against the house, assured victor over the pestilence as long ago he had been victor over those dreaded mole-crickets, cheerfully bearing the burden of a city in distress, counting upon the future as on the past, in a word, immortal,—one to whom in his authority I could therefore give pain without scruple,—and now, in a second, I should see him—how? He was there, on the other side of that door, motionless, laid low, humiliated, no longer leading every one like a flock, fighting on his own account against the insidious disease that was consuming him. I felt a sort of terror of this inevitable contrast, mingled, I have to confess, with a personal horror of the sight of humiliation.

Well, there was neither humiliation nor contrast. I went in and saw him. Stretched at full length upon the bed he seemed even taller than when standing—that was indisputable. His head was lying back upon the bolster and I was especially struck with the forehead, that broad forehead luminous with the light that sifted through the curtains. The unwonted thinness only emphasised the nobility of the features. There was no trace either of anxiety or fear, and as for suffering, if its mark was there it had brought with it no inferiority. His eyes were closed, but at times he opened them wide, almost startlingly. When had I thus seen them take on the imprint of the things at which he was gazing? Before Mélanie’s last farewell they used so to fix themselves upon my sister, upon my sister who was to go away for always, and whom he would never see again.

His whole attitude, his whole expression was gathering itself together, or rather was fixing itself in its highest character: he had not ceased to command. And my first word, my only word, was a consent to his command.

“Father,” I said, standing beside the bed.

I did not utter the word in the sense of filial piety, but because his ascendency subjugated me, overawed me. Yes, in this dimly lighted chamber, heavy with the odour of medicines, suffering and fever, that complex odour which is as it were the advance herald of death, I mechanically came back into subordination, as a soldier about to desert returns to his place in the ranks under the eye of his chief. I was aware of this change in myself. That mysticism in which I had so revelled and which isolated me from all the universe, melted away like clouds before the first rays of dawn. I recognised my dependence, and all the truth of my childish thoughts when they used to begin by making the tour of the house, and the antiquity and the justice of the power still held in those weakening hands, which clasped with pale rigid fingers a little crucifix which at first I had not observed.

I thought I had spoken aloud, but he could not have heard me, for he did not turn toward me. I could hear his low voice—that voice that I remembered so ringing—whispering as if he were, reciting a litany.

“What is he saying?” I asked softly of my mother, who drew near.

“Your names,” she murmured. “Listen!”

Yes, one after another he was naming us all. Those of the three elder had already passed his lips: he pronounced that of Louise. It was my turn, but he passed it and named Nicola, then James. The omission hurt me cruelly, but I had hardly had time to feel it when I heard my name, last of all, detached and set apart. Suddenly I remembered Martinod’s odious insinuations as to his preference for one of my brothers; and I understood that no one of us was the favourite, but that just because of the anxiety I had given I had been the object of a special solicitude. The irresistible desire swept over me to reveal to him, in a word, the change that had suddenly taken place in me. He used to dwell with such interest and even such respect upon our vocation—believing that it would be the basis of our whole life—I had systematically put aside mine, to make sure of my liberty. Now, with full conviction, I had recovered it. Taking a step forward I said firmly:

“Father, I am here. It is I. Upon the mountain I reflected. Don’t you know? I want to be a doctor, like you.”

On the mountain? That was not true, but did not piety command me to conceal the cause of my change of mind? He did not show the joy that I expected—perhaps he could no longer show joy over anything. Perhaps another work, the last, that of detachment, was going on in him. He lifted to me his almost terrifying eyes.

“Francis,” he repeated.

He tried to raise his hand to lay it upon my head. Though I leaned low over him he could not do it, and his arm fell back. I kneeled, that he might do it with less effort. He did not even try, as I had hoped, but in that low voice in which he had named us one by one, he said distinctly:

“Your turn has come.”

My mother, who was a little behind, drew near to ask me the same question that I had asked her:

“What is he saying?”

I made an instinctive movement as if to say that I did not precisely know—yet I had clearly heard him, and after a moment of hesitation, the expression ceased to be mysterious to me. I could see in it an evidence of confidence in the past. My father had not admitted my treachery, my enfranchisement, he had been sure that I would return to him; he counted upon me. But in its form as from beyond the tomb the utterance had a still deeper significance, which completely overcame me; my father was tendering to my weakness the royal crown of the family, inviting me to wear it after him, because I should be, at home, his successor, his heir. I had never thought of that.

Did my mother understand the emotion which bowed and shattered me? She reminded me that I needed food after my long journey in the cold air, and went with me to the door.

“Valentine,” murmured the sick man.

“I am not leaving you, dear.” And she turned from me to hurry back to him.

I did not leave the room, but remained and witnessed a scene which almost without words, apparently obscure and far away, was only all the more clear to me.

My father began by saying:

“Listen!” He was looking at no one at the moment; his eyes were fixed on the ceiling above him. He made no haste to speak, he was gathering himself together. An indescribable anguish swept over me. I divined that my presence had shaken him, and that he was collecting his thoughts as to the future of the family. What he had to say to my mother was doubtless his last wish on the subject. Had I not a right to hear, since my turn had come?

Perhaps my mother, too, understood. She was at the bedside, leaning over, and the sheet which hung out against her knee shook slightly. I am sure I saw it shake—was it the trembling of her knee? And then I saw nothing except one face.

My father was still silent. I could hear the monotonous moan of the fountain in the court. Mother urged him tenderly:

“My love, my dear love ...”

His mind was entirely lucid. He had himself followed the progress of his disease, he knew precisely how he was. At her words he seemed to emerge from the thoughts in which he was plunged; he turned his head slightly and looked at my mother with his almost awe-inspiring gaze, which penetrated deeply into her heart.

“Valentine,” he repeated, simply.

“You had something to say to me?”

With infinite gentleness he murmured: “Oh, no, Valentine. I have nothing to say to you.”

I am sure that he had meant to confide to her the future of the house, and one gaze had been enough to silence him. That gaze alone had told him that there was no need. She who was there, close beside him, was she not his flesh and his heart? All those years together, day by day, without one difference of opinion, one cloud, had made them indissolubly one. What could one utterance add to all that? Was ever greater evidence of love given to wife than that silence, that confidence, that peace! ...

After those high moments I was overpowered by the human cowardice which finds a sort of solace in absence from the scene of calamity. I left the room. Grandfather was getting down from the diligence with Nicola, already a big girl, growing serious, and Jamie, lighter minded, whose twelve years were not yet troubled by any presentiment. Grandfather was anxiously superintending the transportation of his violin case and his almanacs; his collection of pipes was not to be entrusted to any hands but his own. Aunt Deen attended in person to the heavy luggage. Notwithstanding her years and declining strength, she still took upon herself a servant’s duties. Physical effort alone could relieve her mind; with her, sorrow expressed itself in increased activity.

Once in the house, grandfather wandered about like a soul in pain. He hovered around the sick room without venturing to enter. He dared not ask questions, and in his uncertainty he made his moan to any one whom he saw:

“I am getting old. I am old.”

They saw one another, but I was not present. It was not necessary to be present to realise what it must have been, and that the son, inevitably, supported and comforted the father. If life does not draw from a religious heart the fervour of a constant upward progress, one must always remain what one has been. For some the burden, for others the looking on. And even the approach of death does not change things.

As evening drew on, grandfather, who was dragging himself from room to room, bemoaning himself, timidly proposed that we should take a walk.

“That’s a good idea,” said Aunt Deen, who understood him. “There are two or three errands at the chemist’s and the grocer’s.”

He manifested a childish joy at being made useful and I did not refuse to go with him. After the solitude of the mountain, with its silent nights, we found a secret pleasure in the lighted streets and the coming and going of people. The epidemic had been completely checked; the sanitary measures which had been ordered left not the slightest danger to be feared. Awakened from its nightmare, the town was giving itself over to transports of joy the reaction from terror. I had seen it in its consternation rushing with loud cries to seek salvation in one man, and I found it now in all the heyday and thoughtlessness of a festival. The autumn softness floated like a perfume over all. The shops were lighted up. The pavements were crowded with people and the cafés overflowed to the very street. The women were in light dresses which they had not been able to wear all summer, and jaunty in their fresh costumes transformed the season into a belated spring. After so much mourning life was sweet, and funerals were relegated to the background.

I was the son of their saviour. I expected tokens of popular favour, and behold people avoided us, as I was not slow to see. The sight of that old man and that youth forced upon them the thought of their benefactor, and recalled the evil days through which they had passed. Evidently no one wanted to think of them. We should have liked to talk over all the troubles, but no one gave us an opportunity.

Finally, some one spoke to us. It was Martinod, Martinod with his pursed-up mouth and sleek beard who, without giving me time to shake him off, began to talk of my father admiringly, eloquently, enthusiastically, awarding him full and entire justice, celebrating his courage, his organising ability, his medical skill, his marvellous art of directing men. I had resolved, on seeing him, to turn my back upon him with contempt, and here I was, full of gratitude, drinking in his words—forgetting his calumnies, his base manœuvres, his secret plots, which had so nearly destroyed the unity of our family. I ought to have been seeking upon his face the mark imprinted by my father’s hand, and here I was listening to his brazen encomiums. I was still too simple minded to imagine what he was designing.

Gallus and Merinos, who next met us, were quite ready to descant upon themselves and the cruel trials from which they had fortunately emerged. We tried to speak of poor Casenave and the unlucky Galurin, but they changed the subject by informing us that one of them was composing a Funeral March and the other a Danse Macabre, in commemoration of the historic typhus. I have never learned that either was finished.

When we returned home, somewhat cheered up by the change, we met Mariette at the door, full of indignant wrath. She had served us for more than twenty years, and never thought of controlling herself in our presence. The little doctor who had long ago visited me in my attack of pleurisy had attempted to slip a gold piece into her hand, begging her to give his name and address to the patients who continued to crowd to our house, and with an emphatic gesture she had thrown his gold at his head.

“The wretched creature!” exclaimed Aunt Deen, who had witnessed the incident from the staircase. “Ah! they are all just alike!”

And I ceased to deny the existence of those who surrounded us, “they,” and knew that calamity was impending over us.

A little later in the evening, just before the dinner hour, as the bell rang I went myself to the door, thinking that it might be my brother Stephen, arriving from Rome, whence he had been recalled the previous evening. I saw before me in the shadow, for the vestibule lamp but feebly lighted the doorstep, one of our poor people, old Yes-Yes, with his ever-nodding head. I knew that he was still alive, though Zeeze Million had carried her dreams of fortune with her to the grave. Why did he come on another day than Saturday, the regular day of the poor?

“Wait,” I said. “I’ll go for some money.”

But he caught my arm almost familiarly.

“Yes, yes,” he began, “that’s not it.”

“What then?”

“Yes, yes, he cured me, you understand. So it’s to learn, yes, to learn how he is.”

Full of gratitude he had come for information. I spoke more gently, as I replied:

“Always the same, friend.”

“Ah, ah! yes, yes, so much the worse.”

I wondered why he did not go. Did he after all, hope for a little money? Suddenly, like a stammerer who has succeeded in getting hold of his words, and makes the most of it, he thrust his face close to mine, exclaiming:

“He—he—he was a man! Yes, yes.”

And he at once disappeared in the darkness. I gazed into the shadows which had swallowed him up, and then suddenly closed the door;—but too late, for it seemed to me that some one had come in, an invisible some one who took his way up the stairs, through the passage, to the room. I tried to cry out, but my lips uttered no sound; and I thought to myself that if I had cried out they would have thought me crazy. I stood there paralysed, knowing that some one had come into the house before me, and that I could not drive out him who was there, before me, who would not go out, who was noiselessly going up the stairs, his actual presence unsuspected by all but me.

Now I understood the true, the irreparable meaning of what I had vaguely seen without admitting that I saw it. That poor stammering creature had said “He was a man,” speaking of my father in the past tense, speaking of my father as if my father was no longer living. Then that invisible presence which had come in by the open door was Death. For the first time it seemed to me an active thing, for the first time Death seemed to me—there is no other word—alive. Until that moment I had attached no importance to its acts. And in my horror and impotence, I stood there, my arms hanging helpless at my sides.

Long ago, when we had been in danger of losing the house, I had been born into the unknown sense of grief; now I was born into the sense of death. And I felt all the cruelty of the parting, before it had come to pass.

As in that long ago time, I fled into the garden and threw myself upon the grass. The night was there before me; the earth was cold and seemed to repel me. The wind which had risen was wrenching the branches of the chestnut trees, and they groaned, uttering lamentations. Especially one of them, the one of the breach in the wall, never ceased moaning, and I thought to see it fall. I recalled to mind some that I had seen in the forest of the Alpette after a storm, prone upon the ground, at such length that the eye was astonished on measuring them from root to tip. And I recalled, too, that picture in my Bible of the tall cedars of Lebanon lying on the ground—those that were destined to be used in building the Temple in Jerusalem.

The beams of the roof seemed to be complaining, like the trees, and I expected to see the house fall into a heap. What would there be to wonder at, if the house did fall, since my father was dying?

IV
THE HEIR

SORROWS like these have their own modesty, and I throw a veil over mine....

I resume my story at the time when we resumed our ordinary life. The first meal by ourselves consecrated its permanence, after the comings and goings of relatives and friends were over, with all the confusion inseparable from a house of mourning. My brother Stephen, who had hastened from Rome, had gone back to complete his theological studies. Mélanie was doubtless finding expression for her own grief by more complete devotion to all the sorrows of the hospital, and Bernard, far away, had acknowledged the blow by a brief cablegram in which we could measure his affection. We others, who remained, could now count one another like the wounded after defeat.

The bell rang and we must go to the dining-room. Grandfather came in from his walk; he was bent and broken, he leant upon his cane, bemoaning himself about something, I can not tell what. Something had gone wrong, he himself could not quite understand.

“Ah!” he sighed, all out of breath. “I thought I should never get back to the house.”

He spoke as we used to speak when we were little. But had we ever left off saying The House? I saw him so old and weak and hardly realised that it was he who used to take me into the woods and on the lake, in those days when both of us used to sally forth in all tranquillity for the conquest of liberty. In my transformation, going to the other extreme, I gazed upon him now with an excessive pity which bordered upon contempt.

Yes, when the soldiers are on the ramparts the town may question and discuss, may they not? It questions and discusses the utility of arms and fortifications, their destruction appearing a slight thing. But what if there are no soldiers and the enemy is at the gates?

Thus in the old days we could talk of our desires and our dreams, of the commonwealth of the future, and above all, of our dear liberty. We could, then, and now we can no more, for there is no one defending us, and we are face to face with life, with our own destinies. He is no longer here, grandfather, who used to mount guard on the ramparts for the whole family.

Aunt Deen was putting finishing touches to the table. She was very old to impose so much labour upon herself, never stopping to rest from morning till night.

“Don’t, aunt, it is not your work.”

But she protested and muttered and began to weep aloud.

“You mustn’t prevent my working. I feel it less when I am working.”

Didn’t I know, too, that there was now no one in the kitchen but Mariette, because things were changed with us? Each of us must do his part, and Aunt Deen, as usual, began first.

Louise was no longer gay, as she used to be. She came in, leading her sister Nicola, as if to protect her. Why did I look more lovingly at their fair hair? Was I already thinking of the new uncertainties of their future? Jamie, left mostly to himself these latter days, had not been good, and my mother was reproving him. He probably thought that she would never think of scolding him, and all astonishment, he obeyed. And now we must take our seats around the table.

Mother had taken her old place in the middle, and I found in her manner, in her voice gentle as always, an indescribable new authority, inexplicable and yet to be felt. She turned to grandfather, who came next.

“It is for you to take his place,” she said indicating my father’s chair, opposite to hers.

“Oh, not I!” exclaimed grandfather with agitation. “Valentine, I can’t take that place. I am nothing now but an old beast.”

She urged, but in vain; nothing would induce him to yield. Then my mother turned to me with that expression, at once calm and frightened, which she had worn ever since—since she became a widow.

“It must be you,” she said.

Without a word I seated myself in my father’s place and for a few moments I found it impossible to speak. Why this emotion for so simple and natural a thing? So simple and so natural indeed was the transmission of authority.

I have compared the house to a kingdom, and the succession of heads of the family to a dynasty. And now this dynasty had come to me. My mother was exercising the regency, and I was wearing the crown. And now I learned at the same time its weight and its honour. As before this I had been born into sorrow and into death, I was now born into the sense of my responsibility in life. Indeed I do not know whether I can compare the feeling that took possession of me with any other emotion. It pierced my heart with that sharp and cruel dart which is generally attributed to love. And from my wound sprang up, as it were, a gush of red blood, the sense of exaltation which was to colour all my life—blood which, far from subtracting from life’s forces, would add to the eternal defences of our race.

Thus, before I had attained the age of man, I entered, by anticipation, upon the great struggle which without fail forms a part of every human existence, the struggle between liberty and acceptance, between the horror of servitude and the sacrifices which are the price of permanence. A delightful but dangerous teacher had early revealed to me the miraculous charm of nature, of that very love and pride with which we think to bring the earth into subjection, but this too sweet and enervating charm would never again entirely possess me. My life was henceforth fixed to an iron ring: it would no longer depend upon my own fancy. Toward the mirages of happiness I should henceforth reach out only fettered hands. But these fetters are those which every man must one day assume, whether he actually mounts a throne or whether his empire is only over an acre or a name. Like a king I was responsible for the decadence or the prosperity of the kingdom—The House.

A few days later, since I must begin my medical studies, I also was obliged to go away, for a time. This parting tore my heart: in the zeal of my new part, I would fain have believed my presence necessary to my mother, who must be quite crushed by the loss of him who was her life. Her calmness, however, surprised me, and also the clearness of her judgment, and that mysterious new authority that every one felt. At the time of the funeral Martinod had begged for the honour of making a speech, reminding all present of my father’s devotion to the public weal, but she had refused. I could not understand her repelling a repentant enemy, and would willingly have given a contrary opinion. But not long afterward we learned that Martinod, hoping to capture the Mayor’s office, had counted upon thus making use of the dead to regain his lost popularity. Aunt Deen’s they had not laid aside their arms. They would never lay them aside. But the hearth-stone had its watchful guardians, neither to be duped nor lulled to sleep.

But there would be loneliness there, with only Nicola and Jamie. Grandfather would hardly count, for he was failing from day to day. He who had always had such horror of enclosures now asked almost every evening if the doors were locked and bolted. What did he fear? Once, arousing from a doze, he earnestly called for his father. Aunt Deen took him up almost roughly:

“You know very well that he has been dead these thirty years!”

To our stupefaction he quickly replied,

“No, no, not him, the other.”

“What other? What do you mean?”

“The one who was there a little while ago,” he said, pointing in the direction of the consulting room.

Then we understood that there was a confusion of generations in his brain. He felt that he had lost his support, and very naturally our father had become his.

Much affected by his confusion of mind, I became more just to him. Together we had lost the empire of liberty.

The evening before my departure I went to my mothers room. I had expected to lend her courage for our parting, and behold I was weaker and more agitated than she.

“I shall come back,” I said positively, “and I shall try to follow him.”

We never spoke of him otherwise, among ourselves.

“Yes,” she replied, “your turn has come.”

Then she had heard and understood. And as, my head on her shoulder, I expressed my sorrow at leaving her in her trouble, she comforted me.

“Listen; we must not be sad.”

Was it she who spoke thus? I raised my head in surprise and looked at her; her face, ravaged by trials, chiselled by the sorrow of the most ardent love, was almost colourless. All its expression centred in her eyes, so gentle, so pure, so limpid. She was changed and aged. And yet there was in her an indescribable firmness which she imparted to all around her, no one knew how.

“Don’t be surprised,” she said. “That first night I was so overwhelmed with despair that I prayed God to take me. I cried unto Him and He heard me. He sustained me, but in another way. I had not believed enough. Now I believe as we ought to believe. We are not parted, don’t you see?—We are going forward to meet again.”

A Book of Hours was lying on the work table beside her. I mechanically took it up. It opened of itself to a page which she must have read often.

“Read it aloud,” she said.

It was the prayer of the dying, to be recited during the approach of death:

“Leave this world, Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God who suffered for thee; in the name of Angels and Archangels, of Thrones and Dominations; in the name of Principalities and Powers, of Cherubim and Seraphim; in the name of the Patriarchs and Prophets, and of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; in the name of the Holy Martyrs and Confessors, in the name of the holy Monks and Solitaries, in the name of the holy Virgins, and of all the Saints of God. May thy dwelling be this day in peace and thy habitation in the Holy Places! ...”

All heaven assembled to receive the Soul to whom the portals of Life were opened.

We are not parted; we are going forward to meet again; I understood the meaning of her words.

In the silence that followed my reading, once more I heard the monotonous lament of the fountain in the court, and I recalled my father’s confidence when, about to speak, confidence had closed his lips. What could he have said to my mother which she would not know from him? She was still living with him. She would finish his work, and then she would go to join him. It was so simple; and this was why she was so at peace.

Her calmness communicated itself to Aunt Deen, always at work, and ever on the lookout for the most humiliating duties, polishing floors or blacking shoes, as if she would punish herself for having outlived her nephew. And when mother gently took her to task for her excessive devotion, she would protest with tears, as if begging a favour.

As at evening one sees the village lights come out, one by one, along the slopes, so I could see the lights of our house shining out even beyond our own horizon, to the ends of the world, and even beyond the world. They were shining for the absent as well as for the present, for Mélanie at the bedside of the poor, for Stephen at Rome, and for Bernard, soldier of the outposts in his far distant colony. And they were shining still higher.

And it seemed to me that the walls whose restrictions I had deplored during my years of youth, during my mad search for liberty, were opening of themselves to let me pass out. They no longer kept me a prisoner. How should they keep me a prisoner? Wherever I might henceforth go, I should carry with me a bit of earth, a bit of my earth, as if I had been made of its dust, as God made the first man.

That evening, the eve of my departure, my faith in The House became faith in The Eternal House where the dead live again in peace....

April, 1908—December, 1912.