TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_) and Small Capitals are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
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Gowanscs Cosmopolitan Library. No. 5
French Section
THE TWELVE BEST SHORT STORIES
IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
THE TWELVE BEST
SHORT STORIES
IN THE
FRENCH LANGUAGE
SELECTED BY
AUGUSTE DORCHAIN
GOWANS & GRAY, Ltd.
5 Robert Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.
58 Cadogan Street, Glasgow
1915
First Edition, Demy 8vo, June, 1915.
Second Edition, Small Fcap. 8vo, September, 1915.
PREFACE
French literature is perhaps more abundant than any other in those short works of imagination that are called in France contes or nouvelles, in order to contrast them with those extended narratives for which the name of romans is reserved. As far back as the Middle Ages, during the period of the interminable chansons de geste, then of the romances of chivalry, not less diffuse, which succeeded them, the French took pleasure in telling short stories, of which some, such as Aucassin and Nicolette, still retain, for those whom their antiquated language does not repel, much interest and charm. In like manner, when the Renaissance ends, in the period of the ample burlesque epic of Rabelais, the Queen of Navarre, in the tales of her Heptameron, vies with the novellieri of Italy. In the following century, during which Spanish influence prevailed, we hardly find any more short stories appearing in separate form, but novelists, in the manner of Cervantes in his Don Quixote, interpolate some here and there in the plot of their main works of fiction, as halts and resting-places for the mind of the reader: like D’Urfé in his Astrea, or Madame De La Fayette in Zaïde; like, again, Le Sage in his Gil Blas at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Later on, the eighteenth century will come to restore the genre to its sway, and Voltaire will be a master in it; nevertheless he will hardly cultivate it without making it serve philosophical purposes. Along with him, more than one minor story-teller of merit, such as the Chevalier De Boufflers, could be named, but not without regret that their wit and elegance should be employed in the service of a somewhat libertine morality.
From the rapid sketch which precedes, the reasons, whether of substance or of form, which prevent us from including in our selection any of the short stories which were written before the nineteenth century, will easily be deduced. Besides, it is only then that the genre flourishes in all directions, and that the writers who cultivate it produce the most numerous, finished and varied nouvelles and contes. The names of the twelve authors selected were obviously all imposed upon us; but our embarrassment commenced when it was necessary to choose one single tale from their works. It is certain, for instance, that we might have preferred, in the case of Alphonse Daudet, a page in which his trembling sensibility was expressed, and not one of those into which he has rather put his witty Provençal gaiety; and some people may regret that Guy de Maupassant is represented here by a sentimental tale rather than one of those stories into which he has poured his bitter realism and his black pessimism. To those who might be inclined to reproach us, we would answer that we have been guided, not only by the wish to present always the most characteristic work of each author, but by that of giving to our selection the greatest variety of tone among the narratives thus placed in juxtaposition, and also by the desire never to lose sight of any moral proprieties. We have only imposed upon ourselves one absolute rule: only to offer here perfect, indisputable masterpieces. We hope that no one will question our success in this.
A. D.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | |
| The Adventures of the Last of the Abencerrages (1806) Viscount Chateaubriand | [9] |
| The Prisoners of the Caucasus (1815) Count Xavier de Maistre | [57] |
| El Verdugo (1830) Honoré de Balzac | [90] |
| Laurette, or, The Red Seal (1836) Count Alfred de Vigny | [103] |
| The Venus of Ille (1837) Prosper Mérimée | [134] |
| The Story of a White Blackbird (1842) Alfred de Musset | [168] |
| [1]Vanina Vanini (1855) “Stendhal” | [198] |
| The Child with the Bread Shoes (1863) Théophile Gautier | [228] |
| The Reverend Father Gaucher’s Elixir (1869) Alphonse Daudet | [237] |
| The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator (1877) Gustave Flaubert | [248] |
| The Gate-Keeper (1883) François Coppée | [279] |
| Mademoiselle Perle (1886) Guy de Maupassant | [288] |
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
The third, fifth to seventh, and ninth to twelfth inclusive, of these stories have been translated by Mr. William Metcalfe; the second and fourth by Miss Measham; the eighth by Miss Lyons; while for the first an anonymous translation has been used, which was originally published in 1826, but has been considerably revised for this volume by Mr. Adam L. Gowans.
It should be remembered that M. Dorchain’s selection was restricted by the plan of the series to the works of authors no longer living and to stories not exceeding 15,000 words in length. It should also be borne in mind that the notes in the present volume are, without exception, those of the original authors, the translators having done nothing more than translate carefully without omission or addition.
THE TWELVE BEST SHORT STORIES IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
THE ADVENTURES OF THE LAST OF THE ABENCERRAGES
VISCOUNT CHATEAUBRIAND
ADVERTISEMENT
The Adventures of the last of the Abencerrages were written nearly twenty years ago; the portrait which I have sketched of the Spaniards explains sufficiently why this story could not be printed under the Imperial government. The resistance of the Spaniards to Buonaparte, of a defenceless nation to the conqueror, who had vanquished the best soldiers of Europe, excited at that time the enthusiasm of every heart susceptible of being affected by great devotedness and noble sacrifices. The ruins of Saragossa were still smoking, and the censorship would not have suffered the publication of eulogiums, in which it would have discovered, rightly enough, a concealed interest for the victims. Pictures of the ancient manners of Europe, recollections of the glory of former times, and those of the court of one of our most distinguished monarchs, would not have been more agreeable to the censorship, which besides began to repent having so often allowed me to speak of the ancient monarchy, and of the religion of our fathers: these departed subjects, which I was incessantly recalling, excited too powerfully the thoughts of the living.
It is a frequent practice, in pictures, to place some unseemly personage for the purpose of bringing out more the beauty of others: in this story, my idea has been to paint three men of equally elevated character, but not out of the usual course of nature, and retaining, along with the passions, the manners and even the prejudices of their country. The character of the female is also drawn in the same proportions. The world of imagination, when we transport ourselves thither, should at least make us amends for the world of reality.
It will readily be seen that this story is the composition of a man who has felt the pangs of exile, and whose heart is entirely wrapt up in his country.
The views, so to speak, which I have given of Granada, of the Alhambra, and of the ruined mosque transformed into a church, were taken upon the spot. The latter is nothing else than the cathedral of Cordova. These descriptions are therefore a kind of addition to the following passage of the Itinerary. “From Cadiz, I repaired to Cordova; I admired the mosque which is now the cathedral of that city. I traversed the ancient Betica, described by the poets as the abode of happiness. I ascended as far as Andujar, and retraced my steps in order to see Granada. The Alhambra appeared to me well worthy of being looked at, even after the temples of Greece. The valley of Granada is delightful, and reminds one very much of that of Sparta; that the Moors should have regretted such a country may be easily conceived.”—(Itinerary, part VII. and last).
There are frequent allusions in this story to the history of the Zegris and the Abencerrages; this history is so well known, that I have thought it superfluous to give any sketch of it in this advertisement. Besides, the story itself contains sufficient details to make the text easily understood.
When Boabdil, the last king of Granada, was compelled to abandon the kingdom of his forefathers, he halted on the top of Mount Padul. That elevated spot commanded a view of the sea, on which the unfortunate monarch was about to embark for Africa; from it also could be discovered Granada, the Vega, and the Xenil, on the banks of which were erected the tents of Ferdinand and Isabella. At the sight of this beautiful country, and of the cypresses which still marked here and there the tombs of the Mussulmans, Boabdil began to shed tears. The sultana Ayxa, his mother, who accompanied him in his exile, along with the grandees who formerly composed his court, said to him: “Weep now like a woman, for the loss of a kingdom, which thou hast been unable to defend like a man.” They descended from the mountain, and Granada disappeared from their eyes for ever.
The Moors of Spain, who shared the fate of their sovereign, dispersed themselves throughout Africa; the tribes of the Zegris and the Gomeres settled in the kingdom of Fez, which was their aboriginal country; the Vanegas and the Alabeses took up their abode upon the coast, from Oran to Algiers; finally the Abencerrages established themselves in the environs of Tunis; they formed, within sight of the ruins of Carthage, a colony, which, even in our own times, is distinguished from the Moors of Africa, by its elegant manners, and the mildness of its laws.
These families carried into their new country the remembrance of their old one. The Paradise of Granada lived constantly in their memory, the mothers repeated its name to their children at the breast. They lulled them to sleep with the romances of the Zegris and the Abencerrages. Prayers were repeated in the mosque every five days, with the face turned towards Granada; and Allah was implored to restore to his chosen people that land of delights. In vain did the country of the Lotos-eaters present to the exiles its fruits, its waters, its verdure, and its glorious sun; far from the Vermilion Towers,[2] there were neither pleasant fruits, limpid springs, fresh verdure, nor sun worthy to be looked at. If any one shewed the plains of Bagrada to an exile, the latter only shook his head, and exclaimed with a sigh: “Granada!”
The Abencerrages, particularly, preserved the most tender and faithful remembrance of their country. They had quitted, with the most poignant anguish, the theatre of their glory, and the banks which they had made so often ring with the war-cry of “Honour and love.” Being no longer able to lift the lance in the deserts, or to wear the helmet in a colony of farmers, they had devoted themselves to the study of simples, a profession in equal estimation among the Arabs with that of arms. Thus did that race of warriors, which formerly inflicted wounds, now make its occupation that of healing them. In this particular, it retained something of its original genius, for the knights themselves frequently dressed the wounds of the enemies they had overthrown.
The cottage of that family, which formerly possessed palaces, was not placed in the hamlet of the other exiles, at the foot of Mount Mamelife; it was built amidst the very ruins of Carthage, on the sea-shore, in the place where St. Louis expired on the ashes, and where a Mahometan hermitage is now to be seen. Along the walls of the cottage were hung bucklers made of lions’ skins, bearing, impressed upon a field of azure, two figures of savages breaking down a town with a club; round the device was this motto: “It is but little!” the coat of arms and device of the Abencerrages. Lances adorned with white and blue pennons, burnouses, and cassocks of slashed satin, were ranged by the side of the bucklers, and figured in the midst of scimitars and poniards. Here and there also were suspended gauntlets, bits ornamented with precious stones, large silver stirrups, long swords, whose sheaths had been embroidered by the hands of princesses, and golden spurs, with which the Iseults, the Guineveres and Orianas were wont of old to invest gallant knights.
Beneath these trophies of glory, were placed upon tables the trophies of a life of peace. These were plants culled on the summits of Mount Atlas, and in the desert of Sahara; many of them had even been brought from the plain of Granada. Some were intended to relieve the ailments of the body; others were supposed to mitigate the severity of mental suffering. The Abencerrages regarded as most valuable those which were useful in calming vain regrets, in dissipating foolish illusions, and the ever-reviving, ever-deceived, hopes of happiness. Unfortunately these simples possessed qualities of an opposite nature, and the sweet odour of a flower of their own country frequently acted as a sort of poison to the illustrious exiles.
Twenty-four years had passed away since the taking of Granada. In that short space of time, fourteen Abencerrages had perished, by the effects of a new climate, the accidents of a wandering life, and principally through grief, which imperceptibly undermines the strength of man. One single descendant was the sole hope of that illustrious family. Aben-Hamet bore the name of that Abencerrage, who was accused by the Zegris of having seduced the sultana Alfayma. In him were united the beauty, the valour, the courtesy and the generosity of his ancestors, with that mild lustre and slight tinge of melancholy which adversity, nobly supported, inspires. He was only twenty-two years of age when he lost his father; he then determined to make a pilgrimage to the land of his ancestors, in order to gratify the secret longing of his heart, and to execute a plan which he carefully concealed from his mother.
He embarked at the port of Tunis; a favourable wind carried him to Carthagena, where he landed, and immediately proceeded on the road to Granada. He gave himself out for an Arabian physician, who had come to collect plants amid the rocks of the Sierra Nevada. A quiet mule bore him slowly along in the country where formerly the Abencerrages were carried with the swiftness of the wind on warlike coursers; a guide walked before, leading two other mules ornamented with bells and parti-coloured woollen tufts. Aben-Hamet crossed the large heaths and woods of palm-trees of the kingdom of Murcia; from the great age of these trees, he conjectured that they must have been planted by his ancestors, and his heart was pierced by regret. There rose a tower in which the sentinel, in former times, kept watch, during the wars of the Moors and Christians; here appeared a ruined building whose architecture proved its Moorish origin; a fresh subject of grief to Aben-Hamet! He dismounted from his mule, and, on pretence of seeking for plants, hid himself for a few moments, in the ruins, in order to give free vent to his tears. He then proceeded on his road, in a state of reverie, which was encouraged by the noise of the mule-bells, and the monotonous song of his guide. The latter only interrupted his long-winded ditty, in order to quicken the pace of his mules by giving them the names of beautiful and brave, or to scold them by the epithets of lazy and obstinate.
Flocks of sheep, directed by a shepherd like an army, in sere and barren plains, and occasionally a solitary traveller, far from diffusing an appearance of life upon the road, only served, in a manner, to make it more gloomy and desert. These travellers all wore a sword attached to the waist; they were wrapped up in a mantle, and a large slouched hat half covered their faces. As they passed, they saluted Aben-Hamet, who could only make out, in their noble salutation, the names of God, of Señor and of Knight. At the close of day, the Abencerrage took his place in the midst of strangers at the inn, without being troubled by their indiscreet curiosity. No one spoke to him, no one questioned him; his turban, his robe, and his arms, excited no surprise. As it had been the will of Allah, that the Moors of Spain should lose their beautiful country, Aben-Hamet could not help entertaining a feeling of esteem for its grave conquerors.
Emotions still more vivid awaited the Abencerrage at the end of his journey. Granada is built at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, on two high hills, separated by a deep valley. The houses, built on the declivities in the hollow of the valley, give this city the shape and appearance of a grenado half open, from which resemblance it derives its name. Two rivers, the Xenil and the Darro, the sands of the first of which contain gold, and the other silver, wash the feet of the hills, form a junction, and afterwards take a serpentine course in the midst of a charming valley, called the Vega. This plain, which is overlooked by Granada, is covered with vines, with pomegranate, fig, mulberry and orange-trees; it is surrounded by mountains of singularly beautiful form and colour. An enchanting sky, a pure and delicious air, affect the soul with a secret languor, from which even the passing traveller finds it difficult to preserve himself. Every one feels that, in this country, the tender passions would have very soon stifled the heroic ones, if true love did not always feel the wish to have glory as its companion.
As soon as Aben-Hamet discovered the tops of the first buildings of Granada, his heart beat so violently, that he was obliged to stop his mule. Crossing his arms over his breast, and fixing his eyes on the holy city, he remained speechless and immovable. The guide halted in his turn; and, as elevated sentiments are easily understood by a Spaniard, he appeared affected, and conjectured that the Moor’s feelings were excited by the sight of his former country. The Abencerrage at last broke silence.
“Guide!” said he, “be happy! hide not the truth from me, for the waves were calm, and the moon entered into her crescent, on the day of thy nativity. What are these towers which shine like stars over a green forest?”
“That is the Alhambra,” answered the guide.
“And the other castle upon the opposite hill?” said Aben-Hamet.
“It is the Generalife,” replied the Spaniard. “In that castle there is a garden planted with myrtles, where it is said the Abencerrage was surprised with the sultana Alfayma; farther off, you see the Albaycin, and nearer to us the Vermilion Towers.”
Every word which the guide uttered pierced the heart of Aben-Hamet. How cruel it is to be obliged to have recourse to strangers for information respecting the monuments of our ancestors, and to have the history of our family and friends related to us by indifferent persons! The guide, putting an end to the reflections of Aben-Hamet, exclaimed: “Let us proceed, Sir Moor; it is the will of God! Do not be downcast. Is not Francis I., even now, a prisoner in our Madrid? It is the will of God!” He took off his hat, crossed himself with great fervour, and drove on his mules. The Abencerrage, spurring on his, exclaimed in his turn: “It was thus written;” [3] and they descended towards Granada.
They passed close to the great ash-tree, memorable as the scene of the battle between Musa and the grand-master of Calatrava, in the time of the last king of Granada. They made the circuit of the Alameda walk, and entered the city by the gate of Elvira. They reascended the Rambla, and arrived shortly after at a square, surrounded on all sides by buildings of Moorish architecture. A khan was opened in this square for the Moors of Africa, whom the trade in silks of the Vega attracted in crowds to Granada. Thither the guide conducted Aben-Hamet.
The Abencerrage was too agitated to enjoy much rest in his new habitation; the idea of his country tormented him. Unable any longer to master the feelings which preyed upon his heart, he stole out, in the middle of the night, to wander about the streets of Granada. He attempted to recognize, with his eyes or with his hands, some of the monuments which the elders of his tribe had so frequently described to him. Perhaps the lofty edifice, whose walls he could only half distinguish through the darkness, was formerly the residence of the Abencerrages; perhaps it was in this solitary square that those splendid carousals were given, which raised the glory of Granada to the skies. There it was that the troops of horsemen, superbly dressed in brocade, marched in procession; there advanced the galleys loaded with arms and with flowers, the dragons darting out fire, and carrying illustrious warriors concealed in their sides; ingenious inventions of pleasure and gallantry.
But alas! in place of the sound of anafins, of the noise of trumpets, and of songs of love, the deepest silence reigned around Aben-Hamet. This mute city had changed its inhabitants, and the victors reposed on the couches of the vanquished. “They sleep then, these proud Spaniards,” exclaimed the young Moor with indignation, “under the roofs from which they have banished my ancestors! And I, an Abencerrage, I wake, unknown, solitary and forsaken, at the gate of my fathers’ palace.”
Aben-Hamet then reflected upon the destinies of man, on the vicissitudes of fortune, on the fall of empires, lastly on Granada itself surprised by its enemies in the midst of pleasures, and exchanging all at once its garlands of flowers for chains; he pictured to himself its citizens forsaking their homes in gala dresses, like guests, who, in the disorder of their attire, are suddenly driven from the chambers of festivity by a conflagration.
All these images, all these ideas, crowded on one another in the soul of Aben-Hamet; full of grief and anguish, his thoughts were principally turned to the execution of the project which had brought him to Granada. Day surprised him in his reverie; the Abencerrage had lost his way: he found himself far from the khan, in a remote suburb of the city. All was yet asleep: no noise disturbed the silence of the streets; the doors and windows of the houses were still shut; the clarion of the cock alone proclaimed, in the habitation of the poor, the return of labour and of hardship.
After wandering about for a long time, without being able to find his way, Aben-Hamet heard a door open. He saw a young female come out, dressed nearly like the Gothic queens which we see sculptured on the monuments of our ancient abbeys; her black corset trimmed with jet tightened her elegant waist. Her short petticoat, narrow and without folds, discovered a beautiful leg and charming foot; a mantilla, also black, was thrown over her head; with her left hand she held this mantilla crossed and drawn up close like a stomacher under her chin, in such a manner that nothing was seen of her face but her large eyes and rosy mouth. A duenna walked by her side; a page preceded her, carrying a prayer-book; two footmen in livery followed at some distance the beautiful unknown; she was repairing to morning prayers, which were announced by the ringing of a bell in a neighbouring monastery.
Aben-Hamet fancied he saw the angel Israfel, or the youngest of the houris. The Spanish maiden, not less surprised, looked at the Abencerrage, whose turban, robe and arms set off to still greater advantage his noble countenance. Recovering from her first astonishment, she beckoned to the stranger to approach, with the grace and freedom peculiar to the women of that country. “Sir Moor,” said she to him, “you appear to have recently arrived at Granada; have you lost your way?”
“Sultana of flowers,” replied Aben-Hamet, “delight of men’s eyes, Christian slave more beautiful than the virgins of Georgia, thou hast rightly guessed! I am a stranger in this city: having lost myself amidst its palaces, I was unable to find my way back to the khan of the Moors. May Mahomet touch thy heart, and reward thee for thy hospitality!”
“The Moors are renowned for their gallantry,” replied the lady with the sweetest smile; “but I am neither sultana of flowers, nor a slave, nor desirous of being recommended to Mahomet. Follow me, Sir knight, I will lead you back to the khan of the Moors.”
She walked lightly before the Abencerrage, led him to the door of the khan, to which she pointed with her hand, then passed on to the back of a palace, and disappeared.
To what then is the repose of life attached? His country no longer occupies solely and exclusively the mind of Aben-Hamet; Granada is no longer in his eyes deserted, forsaken, widowed and solitary; she is dearer than ever to his heart, but it is a new glamour which embellishes her ruins; with the recollection of his ancestors is now mingled another charm. Aben-Hamet has discovered the burial-place where the ashes of the Abencerrages repose; but while he prays, throws himself on the ground, and sheds a flood of filial tears, he fancies that the young Spanish maiden has sometimes passed over these tombs, and he no longer considers his ancestors as so unfortunate.
In vain does he wish to occupy himself with nothing but his pilgrimage to the land of his fathers; in vain does he scour the hills of the Darro and the Xenil to gather plants from them at the morning-dawn; the young Christian lady is the flower which he is now in search of. What fruitless efforts he has already made to discover the palace of his enchantress! How many times has he attempted to retrace the ground over which his divine guide conducted him! How many times has he fancied that he has recognized the same bell, and the same cock-crow, which he had heard near the house of the Spanish lady! Deceived by similar sounds, he runs immediately to the side from which they proceed; but the magic palace nowhere presents itself to his eyes! Frequently also the uniformity of the female dress at Granada gave him a moment of hope: at a distance every Christian female resembled the mistress of his heart; when close to him, not one possessed her beauty or her grace. Finally, Aben-Hamet had made the round of the churches, in order to discover the stranger; he had even penetrated to the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, but this was the greatest sacrifice which he had yet made to love.
One day he was herborizing in the valley of the Darro. The flowery declivity of the southern hill supported the walls of the Alhambra, and the gardens of the Generalife; the northern hill was adorned with the Albaycin, with smiling orchards, and with grottoes, inhabited by a numerous population. At the western extremity of the valley, were descried the spires of Granada, which rose in groups from the midst of holm-oaks and cypresses. At the other extremity, towards the east, the eye rested upon points of rocks, convents and hermitages, some of the ruins of the ancient Illiberia, and in the distance the heights of the Sierra Nevada. The waters of the Darro rolled along in the middle of the vale, and presented on the margin of its course newly erected mills, noisy waterfalls, the broken arches of a Roman aqueduct, and the remains of a bridge of the time of the Moors.
Aben-Hamet was neither miserable enough, nor happy enough, to enjoy properly the charms of solitude; he roamed over these beautiful banks with absence and indifference. In the course of his random walk, he struck into an alley of trees which wound round the declivity of the hill of the Albaycin. A country-house, surrounded by a grove of orange-trees, soon presented itself to his view; as he approached the grove, he heard the sounds of a voice and a guitar. Between the voice, the features and looks of a woman there are relations which never deceive a man whom love possesses. “It is my houri!” said Aben-Hamet, and he listened with a beating heart; at the name of the Abencerrages several times repeated, his heart beat still quicker. The fair unknown was singing a Spanish romance retracing the history of the Abencerrages and the Zegris. Aben-Hamet was no longer able to resist his emotion; he darted through a hedge of myrtle, and found himself in the midst of a party of young ladies, who were alarmed at his appearance, and, with loud screams, fled in all directions. The Spanish lady who had been singing, and who still held the guitar, exclaimed: “It is the Moorish gentleman!” and called back her companions. “Favourite of the genii,” said the Abencerrage, “I sought thee as an Arab searches for a spring at the heat of noon. I heard the sound of thy guitar; thou wert singing the heroes of my country. I discovered thee by the beauty of thy accents, and I come to lay at thy feet the heart of Aben-Hamet.”
“And it was with thoughts of you,” replied Donna Blanca, “that I was repeating the romance of the Abencerrages: ever since I saw you, I have fancied that these Moorish knights resembled you.”
The colour mounted slightly to Blanca’s forehead as she pronounced these words. Aben-Hamet felt as if he could have thrown himself at the feet of the young Christian, and declared to her that he was himself the last Abencerrage; but a remnant of prudence restrained him: he was afraid lest his name, too celebrated at Granada, should give uneasiness to the governor. The war with the Moriscoes was scarcely terminated, and the presence of an Abencerrage at that moment might give the Spaniards just cause of apprehension. It was not that Aben-Hamet was alarmed at the prospect of danger; but he trembled at the idea of being obliged to remove himself for ever from the daughter of Don Rodrigo.
Donna Blanca was descended from a family which derived its origin from the Cid de Bivar, and from Ximena, the daughter of Count Gormez de Gormas. The posterity of the conqueror of Valencia the Beautiful, owing to the ingratitude of the court of Castille, was reduced to a state of extreme poverty; it was even believed, for several centuries, to be extinct, such was the obscurity into which it had fallen. But, about the time of the conquest of Granada, a last descendant of the race of the Bivars, the grandfather of Blanca, made himself distinguished, less by his pedigree than by his signal valour. After the expulsion of the infidels, Ferdinand rewarded this descendant of the Cid with the estates of several Moorish families, and created him Duke of Santa Fé. The newly created Duke fixed his residence at Granada, and died while still young, leaving an only son already married, Don Rodrigo, father of Blanca.
Donna Teresa de Xeres, the wife of Don Rodrigo, gave birth to a son, who received, at his birth, the name of Rodrigo, like all his ancestors, but was called Don Carlos, to distinguish him from his father. The great events of which Don Carlos was a witness from his earliest years, the dangers to which he was exposed while yet in his nonage, contributed to render still more grave and severe a character naturally disposed to austerity. Don Carlos was scarcely fourteen years of age, when he followed Cortez to Mexico: he supported all the dangers, and was a witness of all the horrors, of that astonishing adventure; and he was present at the overthrow of the last king of a world until then unknown. Three years after that catastrophe, Don Carlos had returned to Europe, and was present at the battle of Pavia, as if he had come to witness kingly honour and valour sinking under the strokes of fortune. The aspect of a new world, long voyages on seas which had never before been navigated, and the spectacle of the revolutions and vicissitudes of fate, had made a deep impression on the religious and melancholy imagination of Don Carlos. He entered into the knightly order of Calatrava; and, renouncing marriage in spite of Don Rodrigo’s prayers, destined his whole fortune to his sister.
Blanca de Bivar, the only sister of Don Carlos, and much younger than he, was the idol of her father. She had lost her mother, and had just entered into her eighteenth year, when Aben-Hamet made his appearance at Granada. Everything about this enchanting woman was fascination itself; her voice was ravishing and her dancing lighter than the zephyr. Sometimes she delighted in directing a chariot, like Armida; at other times she flew upon the back of the swiftest barb of Andalusia, like those charming fairies who appeared to Tristan and to Galaor in the forests. Athens would have taken her for Aspasia, and Paris for Diana of Poitiers, who was then beginning to shine at the court. But, with the charms of a Frenchwoman, she had all the passions of a Spaniard, and her natural coquetry in no degree diminished the fixity, the constancy, the strength and elevation of the feelings of her heart.
At the noise of the screams, which the young ladies sent forth, when Aben-Hamet rushed into the midst of the grove, Don Rodrigo came running up. “My father,” said Blanca, “this is the Moorish gentleman of whom I spoke to you. He heard me singing, and recognized me; he entered the garden to thank me for having put him in his right road.”
The Duke of Santa Fé received the Abencerrage with the grave and yet unaffected politeness of the Spaniards. One remarks in this nation none of those servile airs, none of those circumlocutory phrases, which reveal the abjectness of ideas, and the degradation of the soul. The language of the first nobleman and of the peasant is the same, the salutation the same, the compliments, habits and customs are the same. In proportion as the confidence and generosity of this people to strangers is unbounded, in the same proportion is its vengeance terrible when betrayed. Of heroic courage, of patience inexhaustible, incapable of yielding to bad fortune, it must either vanquish or be crushed. It has little of what is called wit, but exalted passions are with it a substitute for that light which is derived from the refinement and abundance of ideas. A Spaniard, who passes the day without speaking, who has seen nothing, and cares not for seeing anything, who has read nothing, studied nothing, compared nothing, will yet discover, in the greatness of his resolutions, the necessary resources at the moment of adversity.
It was Don Rodrigo’s birthday, and Blanca was giving her father a tertulia, or little entertainment, in this delightful solitude. The Duke invited Aben-Hamet to seat himself amidst the young ladies, who were amused at the turban and robe of the stranger. Some velvet cushions were brought, and Aben-Hamet reclined himself on these cushions in the Moorish fashion. He was questioned respecting his country, and his adventures; he replied to these enquiries with spirit and vivacity. He spoke the purest Castilian; one could have taken him for a Spaniard, if he had not almost constantly said thou instead of you. This word had something so sweet about it in his mouth, that Blanca could not help feeling a secret annoyance when he addressed it to one of her companions.
A numerous retinue of servants appeared, and were the bearers of chocolate, of fruit cakes, and little sweet cakes from Malaga, white as snow, porous and light as sponges. After the refresco, Blanca was entreated to execute one of those national dances, in which she excelled the most accomplished Gitanas. She was obliged to accede to the wishes of her friends. Aben-Hamet was silent, but his supplicating looks spoke as eloquently as his mouth would have done. Blanca chose a zambra, an expressive dance which the Spaniards have borrowed from the Moors.
One of the young ladies began to play upon the guitar the air of this foreign dance. The daughter of Don Rodrigo took off her veil, and fastened a pair of ebony castanets round her white hands. Her black hair falls in ringlets on her alabaster neck; her mouth and her eyes smile in concert; her colour is animated by the action of her heart. All at once she makes the noisy ebony re-echo, beats time three times, commences the song of the zambra, and, mingling her voice with the sounds of the guitar, darts off like lightning.
What variety in her steps! What elegance in her attitudes! Now she raises her arms with vivacity, then she lets them fall with languor. Sometimes she springs forward as if intoxicated with pleasure, and then retires as if overwhelmed with sorrow. She turns her head, seems to call to her some invisible person, modestly holds out her rosy cheek to receive the kiss of a newly married husband, flies back ashamed, returns delighted and consoled, marches with a noble and almost warlike step, afterwards skims afresh the verdant mead. The harmony between her dancing, her singing, and the music of the guitar was perfect. The voice of Blanca, slightly husky, had that species of accent which stirs the passions to the very bottom of the soul. The Spanish music, composed of sighs, of lively movements, of melancholy repetitions, of airs suddenly stopped, presents a singular mixture of gaiety and melancholy. This music and this dancing settled the destiny of the last Abencerrage irrecoverably; they would have been sufficient to trouble a heart less susceptible than his.
In the evening they returned to Granada by the valley of the Darro. Don Rodrigo was so delighted with the noble and polished manners of Aben-Hamet, that he would not let him depart without receiving his promise to come frequently and amuse Blanca with the wonderful stories of the East. The Moor, at the height of his wishes, accepted the invitation of the Duke of Santa Fé; and, beginning with the following day, he was regular in his visits to the palace where she breathed whom he loved more than the light of day.
Blanca found her heart very soon engaged in a deep passion, from the very impossibility she had fancied that ever she should feel that passion. That any one should love an infidel, a Moor, an unknown stranger, appeared to her so extraordinary, that she took no precaution against the malady which began to insinuate itself into her veins. But no sooner did she become sensible of its inroads, than she accepted this malady like a true Spaniard. The dangers and troubles, which she foresaw, neither made her draw back when on the brink of the precipice, nor deliberate long with her heart. She said to herself: “Let Aben-Hamet become a Christian, let him love me, and I will follow him to the extremity of the earth.”
On his part, the Abencerrage also felt the full power of an irresistible passion: he no longer lived but for Blanca; he no longer occupied himself with the plans which had brought him to Granada. It was easy for him to obtain the information which he came expressly in pursuit of: but every other interest, except that of his love, had vanished from his eyes. He even dreaded the knowledge which might produce a change in his mode of existence. He asked for nothing; he wished not to know anything. He said to himself: “Let Blanca become a Mahometan, let her love me, and I will serve her to my last sigh.”
Thus determined in their resolutions, Aben-Hamet and Blanca only waited for a favourable moment to discover their mutual sentiments to each other. It was then the best time of the year. “You have not yet seen the Alhambra,” said the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé to the Abencerrage. “If I can guess, by some words which have dropped from you, your family is originally from Granada. You will perhaps be pleased to visit the palace of your ancient kings? I will myself, this evening, be your guide thither.”
Aben-Hamet swore, by the prophet, that no excursion could ever be more agreeable to him.
When the hour appointed for this pilgrimage to the Alhambra arrived, the daughter of Don Rodrigo mounted a white hackney, accustomed to climb the rocks like a deer. Aben-Hamet accompanied the brilliant Spaniard on an Andalusian horse, equipped in the Turkish manner. In the rapid course of the young Moor, his purple robe swelled out behind him, his crooked sabre echoed on the elevated saddle, and the wind shook the plume with which his turban was surmounted. The common people, charmed by his graceful carriage, said as they saw him pass: “It is an infidel prince whom Donna Blanca is going to convert.”
They first went up a long street which still bore the name of an illustrious Moorish family. This street bordered on the exterior inclosure of the Alhambra. They then crossed a wood of young elm-trees, arrived at a fountain, and shortly found themselves in front of the interior inclosure of the palace of Boabdil. In a wall flanked with towers and surmounted by battlements, was a gate called the Gate of Judgement. They passed through this first gate, and proceeded along a narrow road which led them in a serpentine course between high walls and half-ruined hovels. This road brought them to the square of the Algibes, close to which Charles V. was then erecting a palace. From thence, turning northward, they halted in a deserted court, at the foot of an unornamented wall, out of repair from the effects of time. Aben-Hamet, springing lightly to the ground, presented his hand to Blanca, and assisted her in alighting from her mule. The servants knocked at a deserted door, the threshold of which was concealed by the grass; the door opened, and all at once disclosed to view the secret recesses of the Alhambra.
All the charms of, and regrets for, his country, mingled with the glamour of love, seized the heart of Aben-Hamet. Silent and immovable, his wondering looks dived into this habitation of the genii. He fancied himself transported to the entrance of one of those palaces the account of which one reads in the Arabian tales. Light galleries, canals of white marble bordered with lemon and orange-trees in full bloom, fountains, and solitary courts, presented themselves in all directions to the eyes of Aben-Hamet; and through the lengthened vaults of the porticoes he perceived other labyrinths and fresh enchantments. The azure of the most beautiful sky appeared between the columns, which supported a chain of Gothic arches. The walls were covered with arabesques, which seemed to the eye like imitations of those stuffs of the East, which, in the ennui of the harem, are embroidered by the caprice of a female slave. An air of voluptuousness, of religion, and of war, seemed to breathe in this magic edifice; it was a species of lovers’ cloister, a mysterious retreat, where the Moorish sovereigns tasted all the pleasures, and forgot all the duties of life.
After some minutes of surprise and silence, the two lovers entered into this residence of fallen greatness and past felicities. They first made the round of the hall of Mexuar, in the midst of the perfume of flowers and the freshness of waters. They then penetrated into the Court of Lions. The agitation of Aben-Hamet increased at every step. “Didst thou not fill my soul with delight,” said he to Blanca, “with what pain should I find myself obliged to ask of thee, a Spaniard, the history of this palace! Ah! these places are made to serve as a retreat for happiness, and I!...”
Aben-Hamet perceived the name of Boabdil enchased in the mosaics: “ O my king!” exclaimed he, “what is become of thee? where shall I find thee in thy deserted Alhambra?” And tears of fidelity, of loyalty, and of honour suffused the eyes of the young Moor. “Your old masters,” said Blanca, “or rather the kings of your fathers, were ungrateful.”—” What matter!” returned the Abencerrage, “they were unfortunate!”
As he pronounced these words, Blanca conducted him into an apartment which seemed to be the very sanctuary of the temple of love. The elegance of this asylum could not be surpassed; the entire ceiling, painted blue and gold, and composed of arabesques of filagree work, allowed the light to appear as if through a tissue of flowers. A fountain spouted in the midst of the building, the waters of which, falling again in a shower of dew, were received in an alabaster shell. “Aben-Hamet,” said the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé “look well at this fountain; it received the disfigured heads of the Abencerrages. You can still see, on the marble, the stain of the blood of the unhappy men who were sacrificed to Boabdil’s suspicions. It is thus that, in your country, men who seduce credulous women are treated.”
Aben-Hamet had ceased to listen to Blanca; he had prostrated himself, and kissed respectfully the mark of the blood of his ancestors. Then rising he exclaimed: “O Blanca! I swear, by the blood of these knights, to love thee with the constancy, the fidelity and the ardour of an Abencerrage!”
“You love me then?” returned Blanca, clasping her beautiful hands, and raising her eyes to heaven; “but do you forget that you are an infidel, a Moor, an enemy, and that I am a Christian and a Spaniard?”
“O holy prophet!” said Aben-Hamet, “be thou witness of my oaths!...” Blanca interrupted him. “And what reliance think you can I place on the oaths of a persecutor of my God? Do you know whether I love you? Who has given you the assurance to use such language to me?”
Aben-Hamet in consternation replied: “True, lady, I am only thy slave; thou hast not chosen me to be thy knight.”
“Moor,” said Blanca, “lay artifice aside. Thou hast seen, by my looks, that I loved thee; my passion for thee exceeds all bounds: be a Christian, and nothing shall prevent me from being thine. But, if the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé venture to speak to thee thus frankly, thou mayest judge, from that very circumstance, that she will know how to conquer herself, and that no enemy of the Christians shall ever possess any claim on her.”
Aben-Hamet, in a transport of passion, seized the hands of Blanca, and placed them first on his turban, and then on his heart: “Allah is powerful,” he cried, “and Aben-Hamet is happy! O Mahomet, let this Christian acknowledge thy law, and nothing can....”—” Thou art a blasphemer,” said Blanca, “let us depart hence.”
Leaning on the arm of the Moor, she proceeded to the fountain of the Twelve Lions, which gives its name to one of the courts of the Alhambra. “Stranger,” said the artless Spanish maiden, “when I look at thy robe, thy turban, and thy arms, and think of our loves, I fancy I see the shade of the handsome Abencerrage walking in this forsaken retreat with the unfortunate Alfayma. Explain to me the Arabic inscription which is engraved on the marble of this fountain.”
Aben-Hamet read these words:
The beautiful princess who walks, covered with pearls, in her garden, adds to the beauty of it so prodigiously....[4] The rest of the inscription was effaced.
“It is for thee that this inscription was made,” said Aben-Hamet. “Beloved Sultana, these palaces have never been so beautiful in their youth, as they now are in their ruins. Listen to the murmur of the fountains, the waters of which have been turned from their course by the moss: look at the gardens, which we see through these half-ruined arcades; contemplate the star of day, which is setting beyond all these porticoes; how sweet it is to wander with thee in these abodes! Thy words embalm these retreats like the roses of Hymen. With what delight do I discover, in thy speech, some of the accents of the language of my fathers! The mere rustling of thy dress on these marbles makes me thrill. The air is only perfumed because it has touched thy tresses. Beautiful art thou as the genius of my country in the midst of these ruins! But can Aben-Hamet hope to fix thy heart? What is he, when compared to thee! He has roamed over the mountains with his father; he knows the plants of the desert.... Alas! there is not one of them that can heal the wound which thou hast given him!... He carries arms, but he is not a knight.
“I said to myself formerly: ‛The water of the sea, which sleeps under shelter in the hollow of the rock, is tranquil and silent, while quite near the open sea is noisy and agitated: Aben-Hamet! such will be thy life, silent, peaceful and unheard of, in an unknown corner of the earth, while the court of the Sultan is overturned by storms!’ I said so to myself, young Christian, and thou hast proved to me that the tempest may also disturb the drop of water in the hollow of the rock.”
Blanca listened with delight to a language which was so new to her, and the oriental turn of which seemed so much in harmony with this fairy abode, which she rambled over with her lover. Love penetrated her heart in all directions: she felt her knees sink under her, and was obliged to lean more heavily on the arm of her companion. Aben-Hamet supported the sweet burden, and repeated as he walked along: “Ah! why am I not an illustrious Abencerrage!”
“Thou wouldst please me less,” said Blanca, “for I should be more unhappy; remain in obscurity and live for me. A brave knight often forgets love for glory.”
“Thou wouldst not have that danger to apprehend,” replied Aben-Hamet with quickness.
“And how wouldst thou love me then, if thou wert an Abencerrage?” demanded the descendant of Ximena.
“I would love thee more than glory, and less than honour!” was the answer of the Moor.
The sun had sunk beneath the horizon during the promenade of the two lovers; they had traversed the whole of the Alhambra. What recollections were presented by it to the mind of Aben-Hamet! Here the Sultana received, by means of air-holes, the smoke of the perfumes which were burnt under her; there, in that secluded retreat, she adorned herself with the glorious attire of the East. And it was Blanca, it was a beloved woman, who related all these details to the handsome youth whom she idolized.
The rising moon diffused her doubtful light in the forsaken sanctuaries and in the deserted courts of the Alhambra; her silver rays outlined, upon the green turf of the gardens, and upon the walls of the apartments, the lace-work of an aerial architecture, the arches of the cloisters, the flitting shadows of the spouting waters, and those of the shrubs agitated by the zephyr. The nightingale sang in a cypress which pierced the domes of a ruined mosque, and the echoes repeated her plaintive strains. By the light of the moon, Aben-Hamet wrote the name of Blanca on the marble of the Hall of the Two Sisters; he traced it in Arabic characters, in order that the traveller might find an additional mystery for the exercise of his conjectures in this palace of mysteries.
“Moor,” said Blanca, “these amusements are cruel; let us quit this spot. The destiny of my life is fixed for ever. Bear well in mind those words: ‛Mussulman, I am thy mistress without hope; Christian, I am thy fortunate wife.’”
Aben-Hamet answered: “Christian, I am thy despairing slave; Mussulman, I am thy proud husband.”
And these noble lovers departed from this dangerous palace.
The passion of Blanca increased every day, and that of Aben-Hamet became equally violent. He was so transported at the idea of being loved for his own sake, and of owing the sentiments which he had inspired to no foreign cause, that he did not disclose the secret of his birth to the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé: he pictured to himself a delicate pleasure in giving her the information that he bore an illustrious name, on the very day when she consented to give him her hand. But he was suddenly recalled to Tunis. His mother had been attacked by an incurable disease, and wished to embrace and bless her son before her death. Aben-Hamet presented himself at the palace of Blanca. “Sultana,” said he to her, “my mother is at the point of death. She has sent for me to close her eyes. Wilt thou continue to love me?”
“Thou leavest me then,” replied Blanca, turning pale; “shall I never see thee more?”
“Come with me,” said Aben-Hamet; “I wish to exact an oath of thee, and to give thee one in return, which death alone can break. Follow me.”
They go out; they reach a cemetery which was formerly that of the Moors. Here and there were still to be seen little funeral columns round which the sculptor had formerly figured a turban; but which the Christians had subsequently replaced by a cross. Aben-Hamet led Blanca to the foot of these columns.
“Blanca,” said he, “this is the place where my ancestors repose; I swear by their ashes to love thee until the day when the angel of judgement shall summon me to the tribunal of Allah. I promise thee never to engage my heart to another woman, and to take thee for my wife, as soon as thou shalt know the divine light of the prophet. Every year, at this period, I will return to Granada, to see if thou hast kept thy faith to me, and if thou wilt renounce thy errors.”
“And I,” said Blanca, in tears, “will expect thee every year; I will preserve, until my latest sigh, the faith which I have sworn to thee; and I will receive thee for my husband, when the God of the Christians, more powerful than thy mistress, shall have melted thy infidel heart.”
Aben-Hamet departs, the winds carry him to the African shores. His mother had just expired. He weeps for her; he embraces her coffin. The months roll by; sometimes wandering amid the ruins of Carthage, sometimes seated on the tomb of St. Louis, the banished Abencerrage longs for the day which is to carry him back to Granada. That day at last arrives: Aben-Hamet embarks, and the vessel directs her course to Malaga. With what transport, with what joy mixed with apprehension, did he descry the first promontories of Spain! Is Blanca awaiting him on these shores? Does she still remember the poor Arab, who has never ceased to adore her under the palm-tree of the desert?
The daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé was not unfaithful to her vows. She had requested her father to convey her to Malaga. From the mountain-tops which bordered the uninhabited coast, she followed with her eyes the distant vessels and the flying sails. During the tempest, she contemplated with alarm the sea, as it was raised into fury by the winds. Then it was that she loved to lose herself in the clouds, to expose herself in dangerous passages, to feel herself washed by the same waves, or carried along by the same hurricane which threatened the days of Aben-Hamet. As she saw the plaintive seamew skim the waves with her large crooked wings, and fly towards the shores of Africa, she charged her with all the love-messages and extravagant wishes which proceed from a heart devoured by passion.
One day, while wandering on the beach, she discovered a long vessel, whose elevated prow, bent mast, and triangular sail announced the elegant genius of the Moors. Blanca ran to the port, into which she soon saw the Barbary vessel enter, making the sea foam under her rapid course. A Moor, most superbly dressed, was standing on the prow. Behind him, two black slaves held by the bridle an Arabian horse, whose smoking nostrils and dishevelled mane indicated both his natural ardour, and the terror with which the noise of the waves affected him. The bark arrives, lowers her sails, touches the pier, and lays to her side; the Moor springs upon the shore, which re-echoes with the sound of his arms. The slaves disembark the leopard-spotted courser, which neighs and leaps with joy at once more finding himself on land. Other slaves lower, with great care, a basket in which lay a gazelle amid palm-tree leaves; her delicate limbs were fastened and doubled under her, for fear of their being broken by the movement of the vessel; she wore a collar of aloe berries, and upon the gold plate, which served to connect the two ends of the collar, were engraved in Arabic a name and a talisman.
Blanca recognized Aben-Hamet; fearful of betraying herself in the presence of the crowd, she retired, and sent Dorothea, one of her attendants, to inform the Abencerrage, that she was waiting for him at the palace of the Moors. Aben-Hamet was at that moment presenting to the governor his firman, written in blue characters on beautiful vellum, and rolled up in a silk case. Dorothea approached, and conducted the happy Abencerrage to the feet of Blanca. What transports, when they found that both had remained faithful! What happiness in seeing each other after having been so long separated! How many fresh vows of eternal affection!
The two black slaves bring the Numidian courser, which, in place of a saddle, had only a lion’s skin thrown over his back and fastened by a purple belt. Afterwards the gazelle was introduced. “Sultana,” said Aben-Hamet, “this is a deer of my country, almost as light-footed as thyself.” Blanca, with her own hands, untied the beautiful animal, which seemed to thank her, by looks of the sweetest expression. During the absence of the Abencerrage, the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé had been studying Arabic; she read, with tearful eyes, her own name engraved on the gazelle’s collar. The animal, on being restored to her liberty, could scarcely stand upon her feet, from their having been so long tied up; she laid herself down upon the ground, and leaned her head against the knees of her mistress. Blanca gave her some fresh dates, and caressed this doe of the desert, whose fine coat retained the perfume of the aloe wood and of the rose of Tunis.
The Abencerrage, the Duke of Santa Fé and his daughter departed together for Granada. The days of the happy lovers passed like those of the preceding year: the same walks, the same regret at the sight of his country, the same love, or rather love always increasing, and always mutual; but also the same attachment in the two lovers to the religion of their fathers. “Become a Christian,” said Blanca;—“Become a Mussulman,” said Aben-Hamet, and they separated once more, without giving way to the passion which attracted them to each other.
Aben-Hamet reappeared the third year, like those birds of passage, which love brings back to our climates in the spring. This time he found not Blanca on the shore; but a letter from that adored woman informed the faithful Arab of the departure of the Duke for Madrid, and the arrival of Don Carlos at Granada. The latter was accompanied by a French prisoner, friend of Blanca’s brother. The Moor’s heart sunk within him at the perusal of this letter. He set out from Malaga for Granada with the most melancholy forebodings; the mountains appeared to him frightfully solitary: and he several times turned round to look at the sea which he had just crossed.
Blanca, during her father’s absence, had been unable to quit a brother whom she loved, a brother who intended to divest himself of all his property in her favour, and whom she saw again after seven years’ absence. Don Carlos possessed all the courage and all the pride of his nation: terrible as the conquerors of the New World, in whose ranks he had first carried arms; religious like the Spanish knights who conquered the Moors, he cherished in his heart that hatred of the infidels which he inherited from the blood of the Cid.
Thomas de Lautrec, of the illustrious house of Foix, in which beauty in the females and bravery in the males were regarded as hereditary qualities, was the younger brother of the Countess de Foix, and of the brave and unfortunate Odet de Foix, Lord of Lautrec. At the age of eighteen, Thomas had been knighted by Bayard, in that retreat which cost the life of the knight without fear and without reproach. Some time after, Thomas was pierced with wounds and made prisoner at Pavia, while defending the chivalrous monarch, who then lost all, except his honour.
Don Carlos de Bivar, who was a witness of the gallantry of Lautrec, had caused care to be taken of the wounds of the young Frenchman, and there was speedily formed between them one of those heroic friendships, of which esteem and virtue are the foundations. Francis I. had returned to France, but Charles V. detained the other prisoners. Lautrec had had the honour to share his sovereign’s captivity, and to lie at his feet in prison. Having remained in Spain, after the departure of his king, he had been handed over on his parole to Don Carlos, who had just brought him to Granada.
When Aben-Hamet presented himself at the palace of Don Rodrigo, and the door of the apartment in which was the Duke of Santa Fé’s daughter was opened, he experienced torments hitherto unknown to him. At the feet of Donna Blanca was seated a young man, who was looking at her in silence with a species of transport. This young man wore breeches made of buffalo’s skin, and a doublet of the same colour, fastened by a belt from which was suspended a sword with fleurs-de-lis. A silk mantle was thrown over his shoulders, and his head was covered with a narrow-brimmed hat, surmounted with feathers. A lace ruff, falling back on his bosom, allowed his neck to be seen. A pair of moustaches, black as ebony, gave a masculine and warlike air to a countenance naturally mild. To his large boots, which fell down and doubled over his feet, were attached golden spurs, the marks of knightly quality.
At some distance, another knight was standing, leaning on the iron cross of his long sword; he was dressed like his companion, but seemed rather older. His austere look, though at the same time ardent and passionate, inspired respect and awe. The red cross of Calatrava was embroidered on his doublet with this device: For it and for my king.
When Blanca perceived Aben-Hamet, she uttered an involuntary cry. “Knights,” said she immediately, “this is the infidel of whom I have said so much to you; take care he does not bear away the victory. The Abencerrages were just like him, and they were surpassed by none in loyalty, courage and gallantry.”
Don Carlos advanced to meet Aben-Hamet. “Señor Moor,” said he, “my father and sister have informed me of your name. They believe you are of a noble and brave race: you are yourself distinguished for your courtesy. My master Charles V. must soon commence war against Tunis, and we shall, I hope, meet each other in the field of honour.”
Aben-Hamet placed his hand upon his bosom, seated himself upon the ground without answering, and remained with his eyes fixed upon Blanca and upon Lautrec. The latter was admiring, with the curiosity peculiar to his countrymen, the handsome countenance of the Moor, his noble dress and his brilliant armour. Blanca displayed not the slightest embarrassment: her soul was completely exhibited in her eyes; the ingenuous Spaniard made no attempt to conceal the secret of her heart. After a silence of a few moments, Aben-Hamet rose, made his bow to the daughter of Don Rodrigo, and retired. Astonished at the behaviour of the Moor, and at the looks of Blanca, Lautrec left the apartment, with a suspicion which was speedily changed into certainty.
Don Carlos remained alone with his sister. “Blanca,” said he, “explain yourself. Whence this trouble which the sight of this stranger has occasioned you?”
“Brother,” answered Blanca, “I love Aben-Hamet, and, if he will become a Christian, my hand is his.”
“What!” exclaimed Don Carlos, “you love Aben-Hamet! the daughter of the Bivars love a Moor, an infidel, an enemy, whom we have driven from these palaces!”
“Don Carlos,” replied Blanca, “I love Aben-Hamet; Aben-Hamet loves me; for three years he has renounced me, sooner than renounce the religion of his forefathers. He possesses nobility, honour and knighthood: to my last breath I will adore him.”
Don Carlos was capable of estimating, in its fullest extent, the generous resolution of Aben-Hamet, although he lamented the infatuation of that infidel. “Unfortunate Blanca,” said he, “whither will this passion lead thee? I had hoped that my friend Lautrec would become my brother.”
“Thou deceivedst thyself,” said Blanca, “I cannot love that stranger. As to my feelings for Aben-Hamet, I am accountable to no one. Keep thy knightly vows, as I shall keep my vows of love. For thy comfort, be assured of this, that Blanca will never become the wife of an infidel.”
“Our family will then disappear from the earth!” said Don Carlos.
“It is thy business to revive it,” said Blanca. “Besides, of what consequence are sons whom thou wilt never see, and who will degenerate from thy virtues? Don Carlos, I feel that we are the last of our race; we are too much out of the common order to expect that our blood should flourish after us. The Cid was our ancestor: he will be our posterity;” so saying she quitted the apartment.
Don Carlos flew to the Abencerrage. “Moor,” said he, “renounce my sister, or meet me in single combat.”
“Art thou entrusted by thy sister,” said Aben-Hamet, “to reclaim the vows which she has made to me?”
“No,” replied Don Carlos, “she loves thee more than ever.”
“Ah! worthy brother of Blanca!” exclaimed Aben-Hamet, interrupting him, “I must derive all my happiness from thy noble blood! O fortunate Aben-Hamet! O happy day! I believed that Blanca was unfaithful for this French knight ...”
“That is thy misfortune!” angrily exclaimed Don Carlos in his turn, “Lautrec is my friend; but for thee, he would be my brother. You must give me satisfaction for the tears which you make my family shed.”
“I am contented to do so,” answered Aben-Hamet, “but although I am sprung from a family, which has probably combated thine, I am not a knight. I see no one here to confer upon me that order, which will allow thee to measure thy strength with mine, without degrading thy rank.”
Struck with the Moor’s observation, Don Carlos looked at him with a mixture of admiration and rage. Then all at once, “I myself will dub thee knight! thou art worthy of it.”
Aben-Hamet bent his knee to Don Carlos. The latter gave him the accolade, by striking him three times on the shoulder with the flat side of his sword; afterwards, he girded on him the same sword which the Abencerrage, perhaps, was about to plunge into his bosom. Such was ancient honour.
Both of them immediately sprang upon their coursers, got beyond the walls of Granada, and flew to the Fountain of the Pine. The duels between the Moors and Christians had for a long time given celebrity to this spring. It was there that Malek Alabes had fought with Ponce de Leon, and the Grand Master of Calatrava had killed the brave Abayados. The fragments of the armour of this Moorish knight were still seen suspended from the branches of the pine, and on the bark of the tree some letters of a funeral inscription were still legible. Don Carlos pointed out with his hand, to the Abencerrage, the tomb of Abayados. “Imitate,” said he to him, “that brave infidel, and receive baptism and death from my hand.”
“Death perhaps,” answered Aben-Hamet, “but Allah and the Prophet for ever!”
They immediately proceeded to take their ground, and rushed against each other with fury. They were only provided with swords: Aben-Hamet was much less skilful than Don Carlos in combat, but the excellence of his arms, which had been tempered at Damascus, and the fleetness of his Arabian steed, gave him an advantage over his enemy. He gave the reins to his courser in the Moorish manner, and with his large sharp stirrup cut the right leg of Don Carlos’s horse under the knee. The wounded animal fell to the ground, and Don Carlos, dismounted by this fortunate blow, marched against Aben-Hamet, bearing his sword aloft. Aben-Hamet sprang to the ground, and met Don Carlos with intrepidity; he warded off the first blows of the Spaniard, who broke his sword against the Damascus blade; twice disappointed by fortune, Don Carlos shed tears of rage, and called out to his enemy: “Strike, Moor, strike; Don Carlos, although disarmed, defies thee, thee and all thy infidel race.”
“Thou mightest have slain me,” replied the Abencerrage, “but I never thought of giving thee the slightest wound. I only wished to prove to thee that I was worthy of being thy brother, and to prevent thee from despising me.”
At that instant, they perceived a cloud of dust: it was Lautrec and Blanca, who were spurring on two mares of Fez, fleeter than the wind. On arriving at the Fountain of the Pine, they saw the combat suspended.
“I am vanquished,” said Don Carlos, “this knight has given me my life. Lautrec, you will perhaps be more fortunate than I?”
“My wounds,” replied Lautrec, in a noble and dignified tone of voice, “allow me to decline the combat with this courteous knight. I have no wish,” added he, with a blush, “to learn the subject of your quarrel, or to penetrate a secret which would probably be a deathblow to myself; my absence will speedily cause peace to be restored between you, at least unless it be Blanca’s orders that I should remain at her feet.”
“Sir knight,” said Blanca, “you must remain with my brother: you must look upon me as your sister. The hearts of all present are suffering deeply; you will learn from us to bear the ills of life.”
Blanca wished to constrain the three knights to shake each other’s hands; all three refused to do so. “I hate Aben-Hamet,” exclaimed Don Carlos. “I envy him,” said Lautrec. “And I,” said the Abencerrage, “I esteem Don Carlos, and I pity Lautrec; but I can love neither of them.”
“Let us continue to see each other,” said Blanca, “and sooner or later friendship will follow esteem. Let the fatal event which has brought us here be for ever unknown at Granada.”
From that moment Aben-Hamet became a thousand times dearer to the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé: love delights in valour. Nothing was now wanting to the Abencerrage, since he had shown himself brave, and Don Carlos owed his life to him. Aben-Hamet, by the advice of Blanca, abstained from appearing at the palace for several days, to allow the wrath of Don Carlos time to cool. A mixture of mild and bitter feelings filled the soul of the Abencerrage; if, on the one hand, the certainty of being loved with so much fidelity and ardour was to him an inexhaustible source of delight; on the other, the certainty of never being happy without renouncing the religion of his fathers weighed heavily on the courage of Aben-Hamet. Years had already elapsed without bringing any relief to his sufferings: should he see the rest of his life pass away in the same manner?
He was plunged into an abyss of the most serious and tender reflections, when one evening he heard the bell ringing for that Christian prayer which announces the close of the day. It struck him that he would enter into the temple of the God of Blanca, and ask further counsel of the Master of Nature.
He set out; he arrived at the door of an ancient mosque, which had been converted into a church by the faithful. With a heart pierced by sorrow and feelings of devotion, he penetrated into the temple which was formerly that of his God and of his country. Prayers were just ended: there was no longer any one in the church. A holy obscurity prevailed amid the multitude of columns, which resembled the trunks of trees of a regularly planted forest. The light architecture of the Arabs was here married to the Gothic architecture, and, without losing anything of its elegance, it had assumed a gravity better adapted to meditation. A few lamps scarcely gave light to the hollows of the vaults; but, by the brightness of several lighted tapers, the altar of the sanctuary was still conspicuous: it glittered with gold and precious stones. The Spaniards glory in stripping themselves of their riches, in order to decorate with them the objects of their worship; and the image of the living God, placed in the midst of lace veils, of crowns of pearls, and bunches of rubies, receives the adoration of a half-naked people.
Not a seat was to be seen in the whole extent of this vast area: a marble pavement, which covered coffins, served the great as well as the little, to prostrate themselves before the Lord. Aben-Hamet walked slowly up the deserted naves, which re-echoed with the solitary noise of his footsteps. His mind was divided between the recollections which this ancient edifice of the Moorish religion recalled to his memory, and the feelings to which the religion of the Christians gave birth in his heart. He distinguished at the foot of a column a motionless figure, which he at first mistook for a statue on a tomb. On approaching it, he distinguished a young knight on his knees, with his forehead reverently bent, and his arms crossed upon his bosom. This knight made not the slightest movement at the noise of Aben-Hamet’s steps; no mental wandering, no external sign of life disturbed his deep prayer; his sword was laid on the ground before him, and his plumed hat was placed by his side on the marble: he had the appearance of being fixed in that attitude from the effect of some enchantment. Aben-Hamet recognized Lautrec. “Ah!” said the Abencerrage to himself, “this young and handsome Frenchman is asking some signal favour of heaven; this warrior, so celebrated for his courage, is here laying his heart bare to the Sovereign of Heaven, as the humblest and the most obscure of men! Let me also pray to the God of knights and of glory.”
Aben-Hamet was about to prostrate himself upon the marble, when he perceived, by the glimmering of a lamp, some Arabic characters and a verse of the Koran, which appeared upon a half-ruined tablet. His heart again felt the pangs of remorse; and he made haste to quit a building in which he had entertained the idea of becoming a traitor to his religion and his country.
The cemetery which surrounded this ancient mosque was a species of garden, planted with orange, cypress and palm-trees, and watered by two fountains; a cloister went all round it. Aben-Hamet, in passing under one of the porticoes, perceived a female about to enter the church. Although she was wrapped up in a veil, the Abencerrage recognized the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé; he stopped her, and said to her: “Dost thou come to seek Lautrec in this temple?”
“Dismiss this vulgar jealousy,” replied Blanca, “if I no longer loved thee, I would tell thee so: I would scorn to deceive thee. I come here to pray for thee. Thou alone art now the object of my wishes. I forget my own soul for thine. Thou shouldst not have intoxicated me with the poison of thy love, or thou shouldst have consented to serve the God whom I serve. Thou disturbest my whole family; my brother hates thee, my father is overwhelmed with vexation, because I refuse to marry. Dost thou not see how much my health suffers? Behold this enchanted asylum of death: here I shall soon be laid, if thou dost not hasten to receive my vows at the foot of the Christian altar. The struggles which I endure are gradually undermining my existence; the passion, with which thou hast inspired me, will not always support this feeble frame. Remember, oh Moor, to speak to thee in thy own language, that the flame which lights the torch is also the fire which consumes it.”
Blanca entered the church, and left Aben-Hamet confounded with her last words.
The struggle is ended; the Abencerrage is vanquished; he is about to renounce the errors of his faith; he has struggled long enough; the dread of seeing Blanca perish triumphs over every other feeling in the breast of Aben-Hamet. “After all,” said he to himself, “perhaps the God of the Christians is the true God? This God is always the deity of noble souls, since he is the God of Blanca, of Don Carlos, and of Lautrec.”
Full of this idea, Aben-Hamet waited with impatience for the following day, to inform Blanca of his resolution, and to convert a life of sorrow and of tears into one of joy and happiness; he was unable, however, to repair to the palace of the Duke of Santa Fé until the evening. He learned that Blanca was gone with her brother to the Generalife, where Lautrec was giving an entertainment. Agitated by fresh suspicions, Aben-Hamet flies upon the traces of Blanca. Lautrec blushed at seeing the Abencerrage appear so suddenly; as to Don Carlos, he received the Moor with cool politeness, through which esteem was perceptible.
Lautrec had caused a collation to be served up of the finest fruits of Spain and of Africa, in one of the apartments of the Generalife, styled the Hall of the Knights. All round this hall were suspended the portraits of the princes and knights, who had conquered the Moors,—of Pelayo, the Cid, Gonzalvo de Cordova; and the sword of the last king of Granada was hung under these portraits. Aben-Hamet did not allow the internal pain which he felt to appear, and only said, like the lion, on looking at these portraits, “We know not how to paint.”
The generous Lautrec, who saw the eyes of the Abencerrage turned involuntarily towards the sword of Boabdil, said to him, “Knight of the Moors, had I anticipated the honour of your presence at this fête, I would not have received you here. One loses a sword every day, and I have seen the bravest of monarchs deliver up his to his fortunate enemy.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the Moor, hiding his face with a corner of his robe, “one might lose it like Francis I., but like Boabdil!...”
Night came on, lights were brought, and the conversation took another turn. Don Carlos was requested to relate the discovery of Mexico. He spoke of that unknown world with the pompous eloquence which is natural to the Spanish nation. He related the misfortunes of Montezuma, the manners of the Americans, the prodigies of Spanish valour, and even the cruelties of his countrymen, which did not, in his eyes, seem to deserve either praise or blame.
These narratives delighted Aben-Hamet, whose passion for marvellous tales betrayed his Arabian blood. When it came to his turn, he gave a picture of the Ottoman empire, newly established on the ruins of Constantinople, bestowing a tribute of passing regret to the first empire of Mahomet; the happy days when the Commander of the Faithful saw shining around him Zobeide, Flower of Beauty, Jalib al Koolloob, Fetnah and the generous Ganem, Love’s Slave. As to Lautrec, he painted the gallant court of Francis I., the arts reviving from the midst of barbarism, the honour, the loyalty, the chivalry of the olden time, joined to the politeness of civilized ages, the Gothic turrets ornamented with the Grecian orders, and the French ladies setting off their rich dresses with Athenian elegance.
After this conversation, Lautrec, wishing to amuse the divinity of the entertainment, took his guitar, and sang this romance[5] which he had composed to one of the mountain airs of his country:
Oft to my birthplace mem’ry’s glance
Will turn, and my rapt soul entrance!
Sister, how sweet the minutes rolled
In France!
My country! thee more dear I hold
Than gold.
Rememb’rest thou how to her breast
Our mother both her children prest,
And how her bright white looks would glister?
How blest!
While we with lips of love, sweet sister!
Kiss’d her.
Rememb’rest thou that castle dear,
By which the swift stream flowed; and near,
That Moorish tow’r, with age so worn,
From where
The trumpet sounded when the morn
Was born?
Rememb’rest thou that tranquil lake
Which the swift swallow skimmed to slake
His thirst; where zephyr the sweet rose
Would shake;
And Sol’s last rays at evening’s close
Repose?
Oh! who my Helen back will yield,
My native hill, my oak-crowned field?
Their mem’ry keeps my heart-wounds old
Unhealed;
My country! thee more dear I’ll hold
Than gold.
As he finished the last couplet, Lautrec, with his glove, brushed away the tear which the recollection of the gentle land of France extorted from him. The regret of the handsome prisoner was warmly participated by Aben-Hamet, who deplored as well as Lautrec the loss of his country. When requested to take the guitar in his turn, he excused himself, by saying that he only knew one romance, which would not be at all agreeable to Christian ears.
” If it is a song of the infidels smarting under our victories,” said Don Carlos scornfully, “you may sing it; tears are allowed to the vanquished.”
“Yes,” said Blanca, “and that is the reason why our ancestors, while they were under the Moorish yoke, have left us so many complaints.”
Aben-Hamet then sang this ballad, which he had learned from a poet of the tribe of the Abencerrages.[6]
As Royal John
Rode out one day,
Granada’s town
Before him lay,
With sudden start,
“Fair town,” said he,
“My hand and heart
I give to thee.
“Thee will I wive,
And to thee will
Cordova give,
And proud Seville.
Robes rich and fair,
And jewels fine,
Shall all declare
My love is thine.”
Granada cried,
“Great Leon’s king!
I’m the Moor’s bride,
I wear his ring.
So keep thy own;
The gems I wear
Are a gorgeous zone
And children dear.”
Thou promis’d’st thus,
But kept’st not well,
O woe for us!
Granada fell.
A Christian base,
Abencerrage,
Rules thy birthplace;
’Twas in Fate’s page.
To that tomb ne’er,
The pool so near,
Shall camel bear
Medina’s seer.
A Christian base,
Abencerrage,
Rules thy birthplace;
’Twas in Fate’s page.
Alhambra’s tow’rs!
Palace of God!
Town of fair flow’rs
And fountains broad!
A Christian base,
Abencerrage,
Rules thy birthplace;
’Twas in Fate’s page.
The plaintive artlessness of this lament affected even the proud Don Carlos, notwithstanding the imprecations it pronounced against the Christians. He would have wished to be excused from singing himself, but, out of courtesy to Lautrec, he felt obliged to yield to his entreaties. Aben-Hamet handed the guitar to Blanca’s brother, who celebrated the exploits of the Cid, his illustrious ancestor.[7]
Bright in his mail, with love and valour fired,
The Cid, about to part for Afric’s war,
Stretched at Ximena’s feet, as love inspired,
Thus sung his parting to the sweet guitar:
“My love hath said: Go forth and meet the Moor,
Return victorious from the well-fought field;
Yes! I shall then believe thou canst adore,
If, at my wish, thy love to honour yield!
“Then give to me my helmet and my spear!
In bloody fight the Cid his love shall prove,
Amidst the din of war the Moor shall hear
His battle-cry, ‛My honour and my love!’
“O gallant Moor, vaunt not thy tuneful strain,
My song shall be a nobler theme than thine,
Ere long it will become the folly of Spain,
As one where love with honour doth combine.
“Oft in my native valleys shall be heard
In the old Christians’ mouth Rodrigo’s name,
Who nobly to inglorious life preferred
His God, his king, his honour, and his flame.”
Don Carlos appeared so proud in singing these words, in a masculine and sonorous voice, that he might have been taken for the Cid himself. Lautrec shared the warlike enthusiasm of his friend; but the Abencerrage had turned pale at the name of the Cid.
“This knight,” said he, “whom the Christians denominate the Flower of Battles, bears with us the name of the Cruel. Had his generosity but equalled his valour!...”
“His generosity,” said Don Carlos, interrupting Aben-Hamet, warmly, “was even greater than his courage, and none but a Moor would calumniate the hero to whom my family owes its birth.”
“What sayest thou?” exclaimed Aben-Hamet, springing up from the seat on which he lay half reclined: “dost thou reckon the Cid among thy ancestors?”
“His blood flows in my veins,” replied Don Carlos, “and I recognize my possession of that noble blood by the hatred with which my heart burns against the foes of my God.”
“It follows then,” said Aben-Hamet, looking at Blanca, “that you belong to the family of the Bivars who, after the conquest of Granada, invaded the possessions of the unfortunate Abencerrages, and put to death an ancient knight of that name, who attempted to defend the tomb of his forefathers.”
“Moor!” exclaimed Don Carlos, inflamed with rage, “know that I do not suffer myself to be interrogated. If I now possess the spoils of the Abencerrages, my ancestors acquired them at the price of their blood, and to their sword only do they owe them.”
“Only one word more,” said Aben-Hamet, with constantly increasing emotion; “we knew not in our exile that the Bivars had the title of Santa Fé, and it was this which was the cause of my error.”
“It was on the same Bivar,” answered Don Carlos, “who conquered the Abencerrages, that this title was conferred by Ferdinand the Catholic.”
The head of Aben-Hamet declined upon his bosom; he remained standing in the midst of Don Carlos, Lautrec and Blanca, who looked at him with astonishment. Two floods of tears gushed from his eyes upon the poniard which was fastened to his girdle. “Pardon me,” he said, “men ought not, I know, to shed tears; from this time mine will no longer flow externally, although I have many more to shed: listen to me.
“Blanca! my love for thee equals the ardour of the burning winds of Arabia. I was conquered: I could no longer live without thee. Yesterday the sight of this French knight at his prayers, and thy words in the cemetery of the temple, had made me resolve to know thy God, and to pledge thee my faith.”
A movement of joy from Blanca, and of surprise from Don Carlos, interrupted Aben-Hamet; Lautrec covered his face with both hands. The Moor divined his thoughts, and shaking his head with an agonizing smile said, “Knight, lose not all hope; as to thee, Blanca, weep for ever over the last of the Abencerrages.”
Blanca, Don Carlos and Lautrec all three lifted up their hands to heaven, and exclaimed, “The last of the Abencerrages!”
There was a moment of silence; fear, hope, hatred, love, astonishment and jealousy agitated their different hearts: Blanca shortly fell upon her knees: “Gracious God!” she said, “thou hast justified my choice; I could only love the descendant of heroes!”
“Sister!” said the irritated Don Carlos, “you forget that you are here in the presence of Lautrec.”
“Don Carlos,” said Aben-Hamet, “suspend thy wrath: it is my business to restore thee to repose.” Then, addressing himself to Blanca, who had again taken her seat:
“Houri of heaven, Genie of love and of beauty, Aben-Hamet will be thy slave to his latest breath; but hear the full extent of his misfortune. The old man who was immolated by thy ancestor, while defending his home, was the father of my father; learn also a secret which I concealed from thee, or rather which thou madest me forget. When I came for the first time to visit this sorrowful country, my first object was to find out some descendant of the Bivars whom I might call to account for the blood which his fathers had shed.”
“Well then,” said Blanca, in a voice of grief, but sustained by the accent of a great soul, “what is thy resolution?”
“The only one which is worthy of thee,” answered Aben-Hamet: “to restore thee thy vows, to satisfy by my eternal absence, and by my death, what we both of us owe to the enmity of our Gods, of our countries, and of our families. Should my image ever be blotted out from thy heart; if time, which destroys everything, should erase from thy memory the recollection of Abencerrage ... this French knight ... Thou owest this sacrifice to thy brother.”
Lautrec started up impetuously, and threw himself into the arms of the Moor. “Aben-Hamet,” he cried, “think not to outdo me in generosity; I am a Frenchman; I was knighted by Bayard; I have shed my blood for my king; I will be like my sponsor and my prince, without fear and without reproach. Shouldst thou remain with us, I will entreat Don Carlos to bestow upon thee the hand of his sister; if thou quittest Granada, never shall thy mistress be troubled with a whisper of my love. Thou shalt not carry with thee into thy exile the fatal idea that Lautrec was insensible to thy virtues, and sought to take advantage of thy misfortune.”
And the young knight pressed the Moor to his bosom with the warmth and vivacity of a Frenchman.
“Knights,” said Don Carlos in his turn, “I expected nothing less from the illustrious races to which ye belong. Aben-Hamet, by what mark can I recognize you for the last Abencerrage?”
“By my conduct,” replied Aben-Hamet.
“I admire it,” said the Spaniard; “but, before I explain myself, shew me some proof of your birth.”
Aben-Hamet took from his bosom the hereditary ring of the Abencerrages, which he wore suspended from a golden chain.
At sight of this, Don Carlos stretched out his hand to the unfortunate Aben-Hamet. “Sir knight,” said he, “I regard you as a man of honour, and the real descendant of kings. You honour me by your plans connected with my family; I accept the combat which you came privately to seek. If I am conquered, all my property, which formerly belonged to your family, shall be faithfully restored to you. If you have renounced your intention to fight, accept in turn the offer which I make to you: become a Christian, and receive the hand of my sister, which Lautrec has solicited for you.”
The temptation was great; but it was not beyond the strength of Aben-Hamet. If all-powerful love pleaded strongly in the heart of the Abencerrage; on the other hand, he could not think but with terror of uniting the blood of the persecutors with that of the persecuted. He fancied he saw the shade of his ancestor rising from the tomb, and reproaching him with this sacrilegious alliance. With a heart torn by grief, Aben-Hamet exclaimed: “Ah! why do I here meet with souls so sublime, characters so generous, to make me feel more bitterly the value of what I lose! Let Blanca pronounce; let her say what I must do, in order to render myself more worthy of her love!”
“Return to the desert!” was the exclamation of Blanca, who immediately sunk to the earth in a swoon.
Aben-Hamet prostrated himself, adored Blanca even more than Heaven, and departed without uttering a word. The same night he set out for Malaga, and took his passage on board a vessel which was to touch at Oran. Near that city he found the caravan encamped which leaves Morocco every three years, crosses Africa, repairs to Egypt, and rejoins the caravan of Mecca in Yemen. Aben-Hamet joined it as one of the pilgrims.
Blanca’s life was at first considered to be in danger, but she recovered. Faithful to the promise which he had given to the Abencerrage, Lautrec departed, and never did a word of his love or his sorrow trouble the melancholy of the daughter of the Duke of Santa Fé. Every year Blanca made a journey to Malaga, to wander on the mountains, at the period when her lover was accustomed to return from Africa; she seated herself upon the rocks, contemplated the sea, and the vessels in the distance, and afterwards returned to Granada: she passed the rest of her life amid the ruins of the Alhambra. She complained not; she wept not; she never spoke of Aben-Hamet; a stranger to her would have thought her happy. She was the only survivor of her family. Her father died of grief, and Don Carlos was killed in a duel, in which Lautrec acted as his second. What was the fate of Aben-Hamet no one ever knew.
In leaving Tunis, by the gate which leads to the ruins of Carthage, the traveller finds a cemetery; under a palm-tree, in a corner of this cemetery, a tomb was pointed out to me, which was called the tomb of the last of the Abencerrages. There is nothing remarkable about it; the sepulchral stone is perfectly smooth; only, after a Moorish fashion, a slight hole has been excavated in the middle of it by the chisel. The rain-water which collects in the bottom of this funeral cup, serves, in a burning climate, to quench the thirst of the birds of the air.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Published posthumously. “Stendhal” died in 1842.
[2] The towers of a palace at Granada.
[3] An expression which the Mussulmans have constantly in their mouths, and apply to almost every event in their lives.
[4] This inscription, as well as several others, is still existing. It is needless to say that I wrote this description of the Alhambra on the spot.
[5] The public is already acquainted with this romance. I composed the words for an air of the mountains of Auvergne, remarkable for its sweetness and simplicity.
[6] In crossing the mountainous country between Algeciras and Cadiz, I halted at a venta situated in the midst of a wood. I found there only a little boy of fourteen or fifteen, and a little girl of nearly the same age, brother and sister, who were sitting by the fireside and twisting mats. They sang a romance, the words of which I did not understand, but the air was simple and naïve. The weather was dreadfully stormy, and I remained two hours at the venta. My juvenile hosts repeated so frequently the couplets of their romance, that it was easy for me to get the air by heart. To this air I composed the romance of the Abencerrage. Perhaps Aben-Hamet was mentioned in the romance of my two little Spaniards. I may add that the dialogue of Granada and the king of Leon is imitated from a Spanish romance.
[7] All the world knows the air of the Follies of Spain. This air had no words, at least none which expressed its grave, religious and chivalrous character. This character I have endeavoured to give in the romance of the Cid. This romance, having got into the hands of the public without my consent, some celebrated masters did me the honour to set it to music. But, as I had expressly composed it for the air of the Follies of Spain, one of the couplets becomes complete nonsense, unless, reference is had to my original intention.
My song shall be a nobler theme than thine, Ere long it will become the folly of Spain, etc.
In short, these three romances have little other merit than their adaptation to three old airs of undoubted nationality: besides this, they bring on the dénouement of the story.
THE PRISONERS OF THE CAUCASUS
COUNT XAVIER DE MAISTRE
The Caucasian mountains have long been enclosed by the Russian empire without belonging to it. Their fierce inhabitants, cut off by language and by difference of interests, form a large number of petty tribes which have little political intercourse one with another, but which are all animated by the same love of independence and of plunder.
One of the most numerous and most formidable is that of the Tchetchens, who inhabit the great and the little Kabarda, provinces whose lofty valleys extend as far as the summits of the Caucasus. The men of this tribe are handsome, brave, and intelligent, but they are robbers and cruel, and in a continual state of war with the troops of “the line.”[8]
In the midst of these dangerous hordes, and in the very centre of this immense chain of mountains, Russia has established a line of communication with her possessions in Asia. Redoubts, placed at intervals, protect the road as far as Georgia, but no traveller would dare to venture alone across the space separating them. Twice a week a convoy of infantry, with cannon and a considerable party of Cossacks, escorts travellers and government dispatches. One of these redoubts, situated at the outlet of the mountains, has become a village with a fair-sized population. Its position has caused it to receive the name of Vladikavkaz:[9] it is used as the residence of the commandant of the troops who perform the troublesome duty which has just been mentioned.
Major Kaskambo, of the Vologda regiment, a Russian nobleman, belonging to a family of Greek origin, was to go and take up the command of the station at Lars, in the gorges of the Caucasus. Impatient to reach his post, and brave to rashness, he had the imprudence to undertake this journey with the escort of some fifty Cossacks whom he commanded, and the still greater imprudence to talk of his plan and boast about it before it was carried out.
The Tchetchens who live near the frontiers, and are called “peaceful Tchetchens,” are subject to Russia, and have in consequence free access to Mozdok; but most of them keep up friendly relations with the mountaineers and are very often partners in their robberies. These last, apprised of Kaskambo’s journey and of the very day of his departure, proceeded in great numbers to the road by which he was to travel, and prepared an ambush for him. About twenty versts from Mozdok, at the turn of a little hill covered with brushwood, he was attacked by seven hundred mounted men. Retreat was impossible: the Cossacks dismounted and sustained the attack with great firmness, hoping to be relieved by the troops of a redoubt which was not far distant.
The inhabitants of the Caucasus, although individually very brave, are incapable of a concerted attack, and consequently are not very dangerous to a troop that presents a firm front; but they are well armed and take excellent aim. Their large numbers, on this occasion, made the fight too unequal. After a fairly long fusillade, more than half of the Cossacks were killed or disabled; the rest had made for themselves, with their dead horses, a circular rampart, from behind which they fired their last cartridges. The Tchetchens, who are always accompanied in their expeditions by Russian deserters, whom they use if need arises as interpreters, made them shout to the Cossacks: “Surrender the major to us, or you will be killed to the last man.” Kaskambo, foreseeing the certain loss of his men, resolved to surrender himself to save the lives of those who were left: he entrusted his sword to the Cossacks and advanced alone towards the Tchetchens, who ceased firing immediately, their aim being only to take him alive in order to obtain a ransom. He had scarcely given himself up to his enemies, when he saw appearing in the distance the relief that was being sent to him: it was too late: the brigands rapidly withdrew.
His “denshchik” [10] had stayed behind with the mule that carried the major’s baggage. Hidden in a ravine, he was awaiting the issue of the fight, when the Cossacks found him and told him of his master’s misfortune. The worthy servant at once determined to share his fate, and set out in the direction whither the Tchetchens had retreated, leading his mule with him, and following the track of the horses. When he began to lose it in the darkness, he met a straggler of the enemy, who conducted him to the Tchetchens’ rendezvous.
One can imagine the feelings of the prisoner when he saw his denshchik come of his own accord to share his bad fortune. The Tchetchens at once divided amongst themselves the booty thus brought to them. They left to the major only a guitar which was with his baggage, and which they restored to him in mockery. Ivan (this was the denshchik’s name)[11] seized upon it and refused to throw it away, as his master advised him. “Why should we lose heart?” he said, “‘the God of the Russians is great’;[12] it is to the interest of the brigands to preserve you. They will do you no harm.”
After a halt of some hours the horde were going to continue their march, when one of their men, who had just joined them, announced that the Russians were still advancing, and that probably the troops from the other redoubts would unite to pursue them. The chiefs held a council; it was a question of concealing their retreat, not only in order to keep their prisoner, but also to turn the enemy aside from their villages, and thus avoid reprisals. The horde dispersed by various roads. Ten men on foot were told off to conduct the prisoners, while about a hundred horsemen remained together, and marched in a different direction from that which Kaskambo was to take. They took away from the latter his nail-studded boots, which might have left a recognizable track on the ground, and forced him, as well as Ivan, to walk barefoot for a part of the morning.
Coming near a stream, the little escort followed its course, on the grass, for a distance of half a verst, and climbed down the banks where they were steepest, among thorny bushes, being careful to avoid leaving any trace of their passage. The major was so weary, that, to bring him down to the stream, they had to hold him up with belts. His feet were bleeding; they decided to give him back his boots so that he might be able to finish what remained of the journey.
When they reached the first village, Kaskambo, still more ill with vexation than with fatigue, seemed to his guards so weak and exhausted, that they feared for his life, and treated him more humanely. They allowed him a short rest, and gave him a horse for the march; but to turn aside the Russians from the search they might prosecute, and to make it impossible for the prisoner himself to apprise his friends of the place where he was hidden, they carried him from village to village, and from one valley to another, taking the precaution of blindfolding him several times. They thus passed a large river, which he supposed to be the Sudja. They took great care of him during these journeys, allowing him sufficient food and such rest as he needed. But, when they had reached the distant village where he was to be kept definitely, the Tchetchens suddenly changed their conduct towards him, and subjected him to all kinds of ill treatment. They fettered his hands and feet, and put round his neck a chain, to the end of which a log of oak was fastened. The denshchik was less harshly treated, his fetters were lighter, and permitted of his rendering some services to his master.
Situated thus, at every fresh outrage he endured, a man who spoke Russian would come to see him and advise him to write to his friends to obtain his ransom, which had been fixed at ten thousand roubles. The unhappy prisoner was unable to pay such a large sum, and had no hope except in the protection of the government, which had redeemed, some years before, a colonel who had fallen like himself into the hands of the brigands. The interpreter promised to provide him with paper and to see that his letter reached its destination; but after obtaining his consent he did not reappear for several days, and during this time the major was made to suffer increased miseries. They deprived him of food, they took away from him the mat on which he had lain, and the pad of a Cossack saddle which had served him for a pillow; and, when at last the mediator returned, he announced, in confidence, that if the sum demanded was refused at the line, or if payment of it was delayed, the Tchetchens had decided to make away with him, in order to spare themselves the expense and anxiety which he caused them. The object of their cruel behaviour was to compel him to write more urgently. At last he was supplied with paper and a reed cut in the Tartar fashion; they took off the chains which bound his hands and neck, so that he might write freely; and when the letter was written it was translated to the chiefs, who undertook to see that it reached the commandant of the line.
From that time, he was treated less harshly, and was burdened with but a single chain, which bound his right hand and foot.
His host, or rather his gaoler, was an old man of sixty, of enormous stature, and with a savage appearance which his character did not belie. Two of his sons had been killed in an encounter with the Russians, which was the reason of his having been chosen, out of all the inhabitants of the village, to be the prisoner’s keeper.
The family of this man, whose name was Ibrahim, consisted of the widow of one of his sons, aged thirty-five, and a young child of seven or eight, called Mamet. The mother was as ill-natured as the old keeper, and more capricious. Kaskambo had much to suffer, but the caresses and friendship of little Mamet were in the time that followed a diversion, and even a real consolation in his misfortunes. This child conceived for him so great an affection, that the threats and ill treatment of his grandfather could not prevent him from coming and playing with the prisoner whenever he found an opportunity. He had given to the latter the name of “Kunakh,” which in the language of that country means a guest or a friend. He secretly shared with him what fruit he could obtain, and, during the forced abstinence which the major had been compelled to endure, little Mamet, touched with pity, skilfully took advantage of his relations’ momentary absence to bring him bread or potatoes cooked in the ashes.
Some months had elapsed since the sending of the letter, without any noteworthy event. During this interval, Ivan had been able to win the good will of the woman and the old man, or at least had succeeded in making himself necessary to them. He was versed in all the arts that can be employed in a commanding officer’s mess. He made “kisliya shchi” [13] to perfection, prepared pickled cucumbers, and had accustomed his hosts to the little comforts which he had introduced into their housekeeping.
To win greater confidence, he had placed himself with them on the footing of a buffoon, every day inventing some new jest to amuse them; Ibrahim especially loved to see him dance the Cossack dance. When any one of the villagers came to visit them, Ivan’s fetters were removed, and he was made to dance; which he always did with a good grace, each time adding some new absurd gambol. By behaving thus continually he had obtained for himself the freedom of the village, through which he was generally followed by a crowd of children attracted by his buffooneries; and, as he understood the Tartar language, he had soon learnt that of the country, which is a closely related dialect.
The major himself was often forced to sing Russian songs with his denshchik, and to play his guitar to amuse this fierce company. At first they had taken off the chains which fettered his right hand when this service was exacted from him; but, the woman having noticed that he would sometimes play, in spite of his fetters, for his own amusement, this favour was no longer allowed him, and the unfortunate musician more than once repented that he had let his talent become known. He did not know then that his guitar would one day assist him to regain his liberty.
To attain that longed-for liberty, the two prisoners formed a thousand plans, all very difficult to execute. At the time of their arrival in the village, the inhabitants used to send each night, by turns, a different man to augment the guard. Imperceptibly this precaution was relaxed. Often the sentinel did not come: the woman and the child slept in a neighbouring room, and old Ibrahim remained alone with them; but he kept the key of the chains carefully on his person, and woke up at the least sound. From day to day, the prisoner was treated more harshly. As the answer to his letters never came, the Tchetchens often visited his prison to insult him and threaten him with the most cruel treatment. They deprived him of his meals, and he had one day the vexation of seeing little Mamet pitilessly beaten for having brought him a few medlars.
One very remarkable circumstance in the painful position in which Kaskambo was placed, was the confidence which his persecutors had in him, and the respect with which he had inspired them. Whilst these barbarians subjected him to continual outrages, they would often come to consult him and to make him arbiter in their transactions and in their contests with one another. Amongst other disputes of which he was made the judge the following deserves mention on account of its peculiarity.
One of these men had entrusted a Russian note for five roubles to his friend, who was leaving for a neighbouring valley, asking him to deliver it to a certain person. The messenger lost his horse, which died on the way, and came to the conclusion that he had a right to keep the five roubles to repay him for the loss he had sustained. This reasoning, worthy of the Caucasus, was not at all relished by the owner of the money. On the traveller’s return, there was a great commotion in the village. These two men had gathered around them all their relations and friends, and the quarrel might have led to bloodshed if the old men of the band, after having vainly tried to pacify them, had not induced them to submit their case to the decision of the prisoner. The whole population of the village tumultuously took their way to him, the sooner to learn the issue of this farcical trial. Kaskambo was brought out of his prison and led on to the platform which constituted the roof of the house.
The greater number of the dwellings in the Caucasian valleys are partly hollowed out of the earth, and only rise three or four feet above the ground; the roof is horizontal, and is formed of a layer of beaten clay. The inhabitants, especially the women, come to rest on these terraces after sunset, and often pass the night there in the fine season.
When Kaskambo appeared on the roof there was a profound silence. It must doubtless have been extraordinary, to see, at this strange tribunal, furious litigants, armed with pistols and daggers, submitting their cause to a judge in chains, half dead with hunger and distress, who nevertheless passed judgement in the last resort, and whose decisions were always respected.
Despairing of making the accused listen to reason, the major made him come forward, and, in order to put the laughers at least on the side of justice, questioned him as follows. “If, instead of giving you five roubles to take to his creditor, your friend had only asked you to give him his greeting, your horse would be dead all the same, would it not?”
“Perhaps,” answered the defendant.
“And in that case,” continued the judge, “what would you have done with the greeting? Would you not have been obliged to keep it as payment and to be content with it? My sentence is, therefore, that you return the note, and that your friend gives you his greeting.”
When this decision was translated to the spectators, shouts of laughter proclaimed far and wide the wisdom of the new Solomon. The condemned man himself, after arguing for some time, was obliged to yield, and said, as he looked at the note: “I knew beforehand that I should lose if that dog of a Christian interfered.” This singular confidence shows the idea entertained by these people of European superiority, and the innate feeling for justice that exists among the fiercest of men.
Kaskambo had written three letters since his detention without receiving any answer: a year had passed. The wretched prisoner, without linen, and in want of all the comforts of life, found his health declining, and gave way to despair. Ivan himself had been ill for some time. The severe Ibrahim, to the major’s great surprise, had however freed the young man from his fetters during his sickness, and still left him at liberty. The major questioning him one day on this matter: “Master,” Ivan said to him, “I have been wanting for a long time to consult you about a plan which has come into my head. I think that I should do well to turn Mahometan.”
“You are certainly going mad!”
“No, I am not mad: this is the only way in which I can be useful to you. The priest has told me that if I were circumcised they could no longer keep me in chains; then I could do you service, procure you at least good food and linen, and at last, who knows? when I am free ... the God of the Russians is great! We shall see....”
“But God Himself will desert you, poor wretch, if you betray Him.”
Kaskambo, even while scolding his servant, could hardly refrain from laughing at his whimsical plan, but, when he went so far as to forbid it formally: “Master,” Ivan answered, “I can no longer obey you, and it would be useless for me to try to hide it from you; it is already done: I have been a Mahometan since the day when you thought I was ill and they took off my chains. I am called Hussein now. What is the harm? Can I not be a Christian again when I wish and when you are free! See, already! I no longer have chains, I can break yours on the first favourable opportunity, and I have a strong hope that it will present itself.”
As a matter of fact, they kept their word to him: he was no longer fettered, and from that time enjoyed greater freedom; but this very freedom was nearly fatal to him. The chief authors of the expedition against Kaskambo soon began to fear that the new Mussulman might desert. His long stay in their midst and his knowledge of their language put him in a position to know them all by name, and to give a description of them to the line if he returned there; which would have exposed them personally to the vengeance of the Russians; they highly disapproved of the priest’s misplaced zeal. On the other hand, the good Mussulmans, who had favoured him from the time of his conversion, noticed that, when he was saying his prayer on the roof of the house, according to custom, and as the mullah had expressly enjoined him, that he might gain the public good-will, he often, through habit and inadvertently, mixed up signs of the cross with the prostrations he made towards Mecca, to which it sometimes happened that he turned his back; this made them doubt the reality of his conversion.
A few months after his pretended apostasy he noticed a great change in his intercourse with the inhabitants, and could not mistake the manifest signs of their ill will. He was vainly seeking to discover its cause, when the young men with whom he chiefly associated came to propose that he should accompany them in an expedition which they intended to undertake. Their plan was to cross the Terek, to attack some merchants who would be going to Mozdok; Ivan agreed to their proposal without hesitation. He had long been desiring to procure himself arms; they promised him a share of the spoils. He thought that when they saw him return to his master’s side the people who suspected him of wishing to desert would no longer have the same reasons for distrusting him. However, the major having strongly opposed the plan, he seemed to be thinking of it no longer, when one morning Kaskambo, on awaking, saw the mat on which Ivan slept rolled up against the wall; he had gone during the night. His companions were to pass the Terek on the following night, and attack the merchants, of whose progress they knew from their spies.
The trustfulness of the Tchetchens ought to have aroused some suspicion in Ivan’s mind: it was not natural that men so wily and suspicious should admit a Russian, their prisoner, into an expedition directed against his compatriots. In fact it transpired from what followed that they had only asked him to accompany them with the intention of assassinating him. As his character of a new convert compelled them to use some caution, they had planned to keep him in sight during the march, and afterwards to rid themselves of him at the instant of attack, letting it be believed that he had been killed in the fight. Only a few members of the expedition were in the secret; but the event upset their calculations. At the moment when the band had laid their ambush to attack the merchants, they were themselves surprised by a regiment of Cossacks, who charged them so vigorously that they had great difficulty in recrossing the river. Their great peril made them forget the plot against Ivan, who followed them in their retreat.
As their disordered troop crossed the Terek, the waters of which are very rapid, a young Tchetchen’s horse broke down in the middle of the river and was immediately carried away by the waves. Ivan, who was following him, urged his horse into the current, at the risk of being carried off himself, and, seizing the young man just when he was disappearing beneath the water, succeeded in bringing him to the opposite shore. The Cossacks, who, favoured by the dawning day, recognized him by his uniform and “furazhka,”[14] aimed at him, shouting: “Deserter! catch the deserter!” His clothes were riddled with bullets. At last, after fighting desperately and firing all his cartridges, he returned to the village with the glory of having saved the life of one of his companions, and been of service to the whole troop.
If his conduct on this occasion did not win over to him the minds of all, it gained him at least one friend; the young man whom he had saved adopted him for his “kunakh” (a sacred title which the Caucasian mountaineers never violate), and swore to defend him against every one. But this intimacy was not sufficient to shelter him from the hatred of the principal inhabitants. The courage which he had just shown, and his attachment to his master, increased the fears with which he had inspired them. They could no longer regard him as a buffoon incapable of any enterprise, as they had done until then; and, when they considered the abortive expedition in which he had taken part, they wondered how Russian troops had happened to be at the right moment in a spot so far from their usual haunts, and suspected that he had had the means of warning them. Although this conjecture was without any real foundation, they watched him more closely. Old Ibrahim himself, fearing some plot for the escape of his prisoners, no longer allowed them to engage in continued conversation, and the honest denshchik was threatened, sometimes even beaten, when he tried to talk to his master.
In this situation, the two prisoners contrived a means of conversing without arousing their keeper’s suspicions. As they were in the habit of singing Russian songs together, the major would take his guitar when he had anything important to communicate to Ivan in Ibrahim’s presence, and sing while he questioned him: the latter answered in the same manner, and his master accompanied him with his guitar. As this arrangement was by no means a novelty, nobody ever noticed a trick which besides they took the precaution to practise only on rare occasions.
More than three months had passed since the unfortunate expedition which has been mentioned, when Ivan fancied that he noticed an unusual disturbance in the village. Some mules loaded with powder had arrived in the plain. The men were cleaning their arms and preparing their cartridges. He soon learnt that a great expedition was on foot. The whole nation was to unite to attack a neighbouring tribe who had put themselves under the protection of the Russians, and had allowed them to build a redoubt on their territory. It was a question of nothing less than exterminating the whole tribe, as well as the Russian battalion which was protecting the building of the fort.
A few days later, Ivan, leaving the hut one morning, found the village deserted. All the men able to bear arms had gone during the night. In the visit which he made to the village to seek news, he obtained fresh proofs of the evil intentions they had against him. The old men avoided talking to him. A little boy told him openly that his father wanted to kill him. Finally, when he was returning very thoughtfully to his master, he saw on the roof of a house a young woman who raised her veil, and, with an appearance of the greatest terror, made signs to him to escape, pointing out the road to Russia; it was the sister of the Tchetchen whom he had saved at the crossing of the Terek.
When he re-entered the house, he found the old man engaged in inspecting Kaskambo’s fetters. A newcomer was seated in the room: it was a man whom an intermittent fever had prevented from accompanying his comrades and who had been sent to Ibrahim to augment the prisoners’ guard till the inhabitants returned. Ivan noticed this precaution without evincing the least surprise. The absence of the men of the village presented a favourable opportunity for the execution of his plans; but the more active vigilance of their keeper, and above all the presence of the fever patient, made success very uncertain. However, his death would be inevitable if he awaited the return of the inhabitants; he foresaw that their expedition would be unsuccessful and that their rage would not spare him. No resource remained for him except either to desert his master or to deliver him immediately. The faithful servant would have died a thousand deaths rather than choose the former alternative.
Kaskambo, who was beginning to lose all hope, had fallen for some time into a kind of stupor, and maintained a profound silence. Ivan, more calm and cheerful than usual, surpassed himself in preparing the meal, and while he did it he sang Russian songs, which he interspersed with words of encouragement to his master.
“The time has come,” he said, adding to each sentence the meaningless refrain of a popular Russian song, “hey lully, hey lully, the time has come to end our misery or to perish. To-morrow, hey lully, we shall be on the way to a town, a pretty town, hey lully, which I will not name. Courage, master! don’t let yourself lose heart. The God of the Russians is great.”
Kaskambo, indifferent alike to life and death, not knowing his denshchik’s plan, contented himself with answering: “Do what you like, and be silent.” Towards evening the fever patient, whom they had entertained bountifully in order to detain him, and who, besides the good meal he had made, had amused himself for the rest of the day with eating “shashlyk,”[15] was seized with such a violent fit of fever, that he left the company and withdrew to his own home. They let him go without much difficulty, Ivan having entirely reassured the old man by his gaiety. The more to remove any kind of suspicion, he retired early to the back of the room and lay down on a bench against the wall, until Ibrahim should fall asleep; but the latter had resolved to stay awake all night. Instead of lying down on the mat by the fire, as he generally did, he sat down on a log opposite his prisoner, and sent away his daughter-in-law, who withdrew to the next room, where her child was, and shut the door after her.
From the dark corner where he had settled himself, Ivan looked attentively at the scene before him. In the light of the fire which flared up from time to time, an axe glittered in a recess of the wall. The old man, overcome by drowsiness, let his head fall at times on his breast. Ivan saw that the time had come, and stood up. The suspicious gaoler noticed it immediately. “What are you doing there?” he asked sharply. Ivan, instead of replying, drew near the fire, yawning like a man waking from a deep sleep. Ibrahim, who himself felt his eyelids growing heavy, ordered Kaskambo to play the guitar to keep him awake. The latter refused, but Ivan handed him the instrument, at the same time making the sign arranged. “Play, master,” he said, “I have something to say to you.” Kaskambo tuned the instrument, and, beginning to sing, they commenced the terrible duet which follows.
KASKAMBO.
“Hey lully, hey lully, what have you to say? Be careful. (At each question, and each answer, they sang together verses of the Russian song following:)
“I am anxious, I am sad,
What to do I cannot tell,
Him I wait whom I love well,
Lonely watch I for my lad.
Hey lully, hey lully,
’Tis sad without my dearie.”
IVAN.
“See that axe,—don’t look at it. Hey lully, hey lully, I’ll split this rascal’s head.
“Here I sit and spin apart,
Breaks the thread my hand within:
Ah! to-morrow I will spin,
Now I am too sad at heart.
Hey lully, hey lully,
Oh, where can be my dearie?”
KASKAMBO.
“A useless slaughter! hey lully, how could I fly with my fetters?
“As a calf its mother’s side,
As a shepherd seeks his flocks,
As a kid, beneath the rocks,
Seeks the grass in sweet spring-tide,
Hey lully, hey lully,
So seek I for my dearie.”
IVAN.
“The key of the fetters will be in the brigand’s pocket.
“When I hie at break of day,
With my pitcher, to the well,—
How it is I cannot tell!—
Still my feet seek out the way,
Hey lully, hey lully,
That leads me to my dearie.”
KASKAMBO.
“The woman will give the alarm, hey lully.
“Waiting, ah! what grief I prove,
He, ingrate, elsewhere is gay,
Maybe false he doth me play,
Happy with another love.
Hey lully, hey lully,
Can I have lost my dearie?”
IVAN.
“It will happen as it may: will you not die all the same, hey lully, of misery and starvation?
“Ah, if false he be indeed,
If he pass me by some day,
Let the village burn away,
And on me the fierce flames feed!
Hey lully, hey lully,
Why live without my dearie?”
The old man becoming attentive, they redoubled the hey lully, accompanied by a noisy arpeggio: “Play, master,” continued the denshchik, “play the Cossack dance; I am going to dance round the room so as to get near the axe; play boldly.”
KASKAMBO.
“Well, be it so; this hell will be ended.”
He turned away his head and began with all his might to play the required dance.
Ivan began the steps and grotesque attitudes of the Cossack dance, which the old man especially liked, leaping and gambolling, and uttering cries to distract his attention. When Kaskambo felt that the dancer was near the axe, his heart throbbed with anxiety: this means of their deliverance was in a little cupboard without a door, contrived within the wall, but at a height to which Ivan could hardly reach. To have it within his reach, he took advantage of a favourable moment, seized it suddenly and at once placed it on the ground in the shadow cast by Ibrahim’s body. When the latter looked at him, he was far from the place, and continuing his dance. This dangerous scene had lasted for some time, and Kaskambo, weary of playing, began to think that his denshchik’s courage was failing, or that he did not think it a favourable opportunity. He glanced at him at the instant when, having seized the axe, the intrepid dancer was steadily advancing to strike the brigand with it. The emotion felt by the major was so strong, that he stopped playing, and let his guitar fall on his knees. At the same moment, the old man had stooped, and made a step forward to push some brushwood into the fire: some dry leaves burst into flame, and cast a bright glow into the room. Ibrahim turned round to sit down.
If, at this juncture, Ivan had pursued his enterprise, a hand-to-hand fight would have been inevitable: the alarm would have been given, which above all it was needful to avoid; but his presence of mind saved him. When he noticed the major’s confusion, and saw Ibrahim rise, he placed the axe behind the very log which served as a seat to the latter, and recommenced his dance. “Play, confound it!” he said to his master; “what are you thinking of?” The major, realizing how unwise he had been, began to play again softly. The old gaoler had no suspicion, and sat down again; but he ordered them to finish the music and lie down. Ivan, quietly going and taking the guitar-case, came and placed it on the hearth; but, instead of taking the instrument which his master held out to him, he suddenly snatched the axe from behind Ibrahim, and dealt him such a frightful blow on the head, that the unhappy man did not even utter a sigh, but fell stark dead, his face in the fire; his long grey beard began to blaze; Ivan pulled him out by the feet and covered him with a mat.
They were listening, to find out if the woman had been awakened, when, surprised no doubt at the silence which reigned after so much noise, she opened the door of her room: “What are you doing in here?” she said, advancing towards the prisoners; “how is it that there is a smell of burnt feathers?” The fire had just been scattered and gave hardly any light. Ivan raised the axe to strike her; she had time to turn her head, and received the blow on her breast, uttering a frightful sigh; another blow, swifter than lightning, caught her as she fell, and stretched her dead at Kaskambo’s feet. Terrified by this second murder, which he had not expected, the major, seeing Ivan advance towards the child’s room, placed himself in the way to stop him. “Where are you going, wretched man?” he said; “would you be so barbarous as to sacrifice the child too, who has shown me such friendship? If you set me free at this price, neither your attachment nor your services shall save you when we reach the line.”
“At the line,” answered Ivan, “you can do as you like; but here we must make an end.”
Kaskambo, collecting all his strength, collared him as he attempted to force his passage. “Wretch,” he said, “if you dare to attempt his life, if you touch a single hair of his head, I swear here before God that I will give myself up into the hands of the Tchetchens, and your barbarity will be in vain.”
“Into the hands of the Tchetchens!” repeated the denshchik, raising his bloody axe above his master’s head; “they shall never recapture you alive; I will slay them, you and myself, before that happens. This child might ruin us by giving the alarm; in your present state, women would be enough to put you back in prison.”
“Stop! stop!” cried Kaskambo, from whose hands Ivan was trying to free himself. “Stop! monster, you shall murder me before committing this crime!”
But, impeded by his chains and weak as he was, he could not restrain the ferocious young man, who thrust him back, so that he fell violently to the ground, ready to faint from bewilderment and horror. While, all stained with the blood of the first victims, he was attempting to rise, “Ivan,” he cried, “I implore you, do not kill him! In the name of God, do not spill the blood of that innocent creature!”
He ran to the help of the child as soon as he had the strength; but when he reached the door of the room he knocked in the darkness against Ivan coming out.
“All is over, master; let us lose no time, and don’t make a noise. Don’t make a noise, I tell you,” he answered to his master’s despairing reproaches: “what’s done is done; it is impossible to draw back now. Until we are free, every man I meet is dead, or else he must kill me; and if any one comes in here before our departure, I don’t care whether it is a man, a woman, or a child, a friend or an enemy, I lay him there with the others.”
He lighted a splinter of larch and began to rummage in the brigand’s cartridge-box and pockets; the key of the fetters was not there: he sought for it as vainly in the woman’s clothes, in a chest, and wherever he fancied it could be hidden. Whilst he made this search, the major gave himself up without restraint to his grief. Ivan comforted him in his own way. “You would do better,” he said, “to weep for the key of the fetters which is lost. Why should you regret this race of brigands, who have tortured you for more than fifteen months? They wanted to put us to death, well! their turn has come before ours. Is it my fault? May hell swallow them all!”
However, as the key of the fetters was not to be found, so many slaughters would be in vain if they could not manage to break them. Ivan, with the corner of the axe, succeeded in loosening the ring on the hand, but that which fastened the chain to the feet resisted all his efforts; he was afraid of hurting his master, and dared not use all his strength. On the other hand, the night was advancing, and the danger became urgent; they decided to go. Ivan fastened the chain firmly to the major’s belt, so that it impeded him as little as possible, and made no noise. He placed in a wallet a quarter of mutton, the remains of the evening meal, added to it some other provisions, and armed himself with the dead man’s pistol and dagger. Kaskambo took possession of his “burka”;[16] they went out in silence, and, going round the house to avoid meeting any one, they took the path into the mountains, instead of going towards Mozdok and the ordinary road, easily foreseeing that they would be pursued in that direction. For the rest of the night they tramped along the mountains that lay on their right, and when day began to dawn they entered a beech wood which crowned the whole mountain, and sheltered them from the danger of being seen from a distance.
It was in the month of February; the ground, on these heights, and especially in the forest, was still covered with a hard snow which supported the travellers’ steps during the night and part of the morning; but towards midday, when it had been softened by the sun, they sank at every instant, which made their progress very slow. Thus they reached laboriously the side of a deep valley which they had to cross, in the depths of which the snow had disappeared; a beaten path followed the windings of the stream, and proclaimed that the place was frequented. On this account, and because of the fatigue which overwhelmed the major, the travellers decided to remain in that spot to wait for the night; they settled down between some isolated rocks which projected from the snow. Ivan cut down some pine-branches to make from them, on the snow, a thick bed, on which the major slept. While he rested, Ivan tried to find out where they were. The valley at the summit of which they were was surrounded by lofty mountains between which no outlet was visible: he saw that it was impossible to avoid the beaten track, and that they must of necessity follow the course of the stream in order to get out of the labyrinth. It was about eleven o’clock at night, and the snow was beginning to harden again, when they descended into the valley. But before beginning their journey they set fire to their shelter, as much to warm themselves as to prepare a little meal of shashlyk, of which they were in great need. A handful of snow was their drink, and a mouthful of brandy finished the feast. They crossed the valley, luckily without seeing anyone, and entered the pass where the path and the stream were confined between steep perpendicular mountains. They walked with all possible speed, knowing well the danger they ran of being met in this narrow passage, out of which they only emerged towards nine o’clock in the morning.
It was then only that the dark pass suddenly opened out, and that they saw, beyond the lower mountains which intersected in front of them, the immense horizon of Russia, like a distant sea. It would be difficult to form an idea of the joy felt by the major at this unexpected sight. “Russia! Russia!” was the only word he could pronounce. The travellers sat down to rest and to enjoy beforehand their approaching freedom. This anticipation of happiness was mingled in the major’s mind with the memory of the horrible catastrophe which he had just witnessed, and which his fetters and blood-stained clothes recalled to him vividly. With eyes fixed on the distant goal of his labours, he calculated the difficulties of the journey. The sight of the long and dangerous road which remained for him to travel with fettered feet and legs swollen with fatigue, soon obliterated even the trace of the momentary pleasure which the sight of his native land had given him. To the torments of imagination was added a burning thirst. Ivan went down to the stream which flowed some way off to bring some water to his master; he found there a bridge made of two trees and saw far off a dwelling. It was a kind of chalet, a summer house of the Tchetchens which happened to be empty. In the plight of the fugitives, this isolated house was a precious discovery. Ivan came to tear his master away from his reflections, in order to lead him into the refuge which he had just discovered, and after having settled him there he at once began to look for the store.
The inhabitants of the Caucasus, who, for the most part, are half nomads and often exposed to attacks from their neighbours, always have near their houses caves, in which they hide their provisions and goods. These stores, formed like narrow wells, are closed with a plank or large stone carefully covered with earth, and are always placed in spots where turf is wanting, for fear the colour of the grass should betray the deposit. In spite of these precautions, the Russian soldiers often discover them; they strike the earth with the ramrods of their guns in the beaten paths which are near dwellings, and the sound indicates the hollows which they seek. Ivan found one under a shed adjoining the house, in which he discovered earthenware pots, some ears of maize, a piece of rock-salt and several household utensils. He ran to fetch water for cooking purposes; the quarter of mutton and some potatoes which he had brought were placed on the fire. While the soup was preparing, Kaskambo roasted the ears of maize: finally, some hazelnuts also found in the store completed the meal. When he had finished, Ivan, with more time and means, succeeded in freeing his master from his chains; and the latter, calmer, and revived by a meal excellent under the circumstances, slept soundly, and it was deep night when he awoke. In spite of this favourable rest, when he wanted to continue his journey, his swollen legs were so stiff that he could not make the least movement without suffering unbearable pain. However, he had to go. Leaning on his servant, he set out mournfully, convinced that he would never reach the longed-for goal. The motion and the heat of walking appeased little by little the pain he was suffering. He walked all night, often stopping, and then immediately recommencing his march. Sometimes also, giving way to discouragement, he threw himself on the ground, and urged Ivan to leave him to his evil fate. His dauntless companion not only encouraged him by his talk and example, but almost used violence to raise and drag him along with him. They found in their journey a difficult and dangerous pass, which they could not avoid. To wait for day would have caused an irreparable loss of time; they decided to cross it at the risk of being dashed to pieces, but, before allowing his master to enter upon it, Ivan wished to reconnoitre and go over it alone. While he descended, Kaskambo stayed on the brink of the rock in a state of anxiety difficult to describe. The night was dark; he heard beneath his feet the dull murmur of a rapid stream which flowed through the valley; the sound of the stones loosened from the mountain under his companion’s tread, and falling into the water, made him aware of the immense depth of the precipice on the edge of which he had stopped. In this moment of anguish, which might perhaps be the last of his life, the memory of his mother returned to his mind; she had tenderly blessed him on his departure from the line; this thought restored his courage. A secret presentiment gave him the hope of seeing her again. “O God!” he cried, “grant that her blessing may not be in vain!” As he was ending this short but fervent prayer, Ivan reappeared. The pass when surveyed was not so difficult as they had thought at first. After climbing down several fathoms between the rocks, it was necessary, in order to reach the practicable side, to walk along a narrow sloping ledge of rock, covered with slippery snow, beneath which was a sheer precipice. Ivan with his axe cut in the snow holes which made the passage easier: they crossed themselves. “Come then,” said Kaskambo, “if I perish, at least let it not be for want of courage; it was only illness that took that from me. I will go on now as long as God gives me strength.” They emerged successfully from the dangerous pass and continued their journey. The paths began to be more continuous and well-beaten, and they no longer found any snow except in places looking north, and on low-lying ground where it had accumulated. They had the good fortune to meet nobody until daybreak, when the sight of two men appearing in the distance obliged them to lie down on the ground so that they might not be seen.
When the mountains are left behind in these provinces, woods are no longer to be found; the ground there is absolutely bare, and a single tree would be vainly sought, except on the banks of the large rivers, where still they are very scarce, a most extraordinary thing, considering the fertility of the soil. They had for some time been following the course of the Sudja, which they had to cross to reach Mozdok, seeking a place where the water, less rapid, would offer a safer passage, when they saw a man on horseback coming straight towards them. The country, completely open, offered neither trees nor bushes as a means of hiding. They lay flat down under the bank of the Sudja, on the edge of the water. The traveller passed within a few fathoms of their lair. They intended only to defend themselves if they were attacked. Ivan drew his dagger and gave the pistol to the major. Seeing then that the rider was only a child of twelve or thirteen, he hurled himself suddenly upon him, collared him, and threw him down on the grass. The youth would have resisted, but, seeing the major appear on the river-bank, pistol in hand, he fled at full speed. The horse had no saddle, and a halter passed through its mouth by way of bridle. The two fugitives at once made use of their capture to cross the river. This encounter was very fortunate for them, for they soon saw that it would have been impossible for them to pass it on foot, as they had purposed. Their mount, although burdened with the weight of two men, was almost carried away by the swiftness of the water. However, they arrived safe and sound at the opposite shore, which unfortunately was too steep for the horse to be able to land. They got off to lighten it. As Ivan pulled with all his might to enable it to mount upon the shore, the halter came unfastened and remained in his hands. The animal, swept away by the current, after many efforts to land, was swallowed up in the river, and drowned.
Deprived of this resource, but from this time less troubled as to the danger of pursuit, they made for a hillock, covered with loose rocks, which they saw in the distance, intending to hide themselves and rest there until night. From their reckoning of the distance they had already travelled, they judged that the dwellings of the peaceful Tchetchens ought not to be very far away; but nothing could be more unsafe than to give themselves up to these men, whose probable treachery might be their undoing.
However, considering the weak state of Kaskambo, it would be very difficult for him to reach the Terek unaided. Their provisions were exhausted: they passed the rest of the day in gloomy silence, not daring to reveal their anxieties to each other. Towards evening, the major saw his denshchik strike his brow with his fist, uttering a deep sigh. Astonished at this sudden despair, which his dauntless companion had in no way evinced until then, he asked him the reason of it.
“Master,” said Ivan, “I have done something very wrong!”
“May God forgive us it!” answered Kaskambo, crossing himself.
“Yes,” continued Ivan, “I have forgotten to bring away that fine carbine which was in the child’s room. What could you expect? It never entered my mind: you were groaning so up there, and making such a noise, that I forgot it. You’re laughing, are you? It was the best carbine there was in the whole village. I would have made a present of it to the first man we met, to put him on our side: for I don’t know how, in the state I see you are in, we can finish our march.”
The weather, which till then had favoured them, changed during the day. The cold Russian wind blew violently, and drove sleet in their faces. They set out at nightfall, uncertain whether they should try to reach some villages, or to avoid them. But the long stage which remained for them to travel, supposing the latter, became absolutely impossible for them owing to a fresh misfortune which befell them towards the end of the night. As they were crossing a little ravine, over the remains of snow which covered its bottom, the ice broke under their feet, and they were plunged in water up to the knees. Kaskambo’s efforts to extricate himself made his garments wetter than ever. Since the time when they set out, the cold had never been so keen; the whole country-side was white with sleet. After walking for a quarter of an hour, seized by the cold, he fell, through weariness and pain, and absolutely refused to go any farther. Seeing the impossibility of reaching the goal of his journey, he considered it a useless barbarity to detain his companion, who could easily escape by himself.
“Listen, Ivan,” he said, “God is my witness that I have done all I could up till now to take advantage of the help you have given me, but you see that it can no longer save me, and that my fate is sealed. Go on to the line, my dear Ivan, return to our regiment; I command you. Say to my old friends and to my superior officers that you have left me here to feed the ravens, and that I wish them a better fate. But, before you go, recollect the oath which you made up yonder in the blood of our gaolers. You swore that the Tchetchens should not recapture me alive: keep your word.”
So saying, he lay down on the ground, and covered himself completely with his burka.
“There is one resource left,” Ivan answered; “it is to seek the dwelling of a Tchetchen and to win over its master with promises. If he betrays us, we shall at least have less with which to reproach ourselves. Try again to drag yourself so far; or else,” he added, seeing that his master kept silence, “I will go alone, and try to win over a Tchetchen; and, if it turns out well, I will return with him to fetch you; if badly, if I perish and do not come back, here, take the pistol.”
Kaskambo stretched out a hand from under the burka and took the pistol. Ivan covered him with dry grass and brushwood for fear he should be discovered by anyone during his excursion. As he prepared to go, his master called him back. “Ivan,” he said, “hear again my last request. If you recross the Terek, and if you see my mother again without me ...”
“Master,” Ivan interrupted, “good-bye for the present. If you perish, neither your mother nor mine will ever see me again.”
After an hour’s walk, he saw from a small eminence two villages three or four versts distant; that was not what he sought; he wanted to find an isolated house, which he could enter without being seen, to win over its master secretly. The distant smoke of a chimney discovered to him one such as he desired. He at once betook himself thither, and entered without hesitation. The master of the house was sitting on the ground, engaged in patching one of his boots.
“I have come,” said Ivan, “to give you the chance of earning two hundred roubles, and to ask a service of you. No doubt you have heard of Major Kaskambo, a prisoner among the mountaineers. Well, I have rescued him; he is here, a step off, ill and in your power. Should you please to give him up again to his enemies, they will praise you no doubt, but, you know well, they will not reward you. If on the contrary you consent to save him, by keeping him in your house for three days only, I will go to Mozdok, and will bring you two hundred roubles in hard cash for his ransom; while, if you dare to stir from your place,” (he added, drawing his dagger) “and to give the alarm to have me seized, I will kill you. Your word at once, or you are dead.”
Ivan’s assured tone convinced the Tchetchen without alarming him. “Young man,” he said, calmly putting on his boot, “I also have a dagger in my girdle, and yours does not terrify me. Had you entered my house as a friend, I would never have betrayed a man who had passed my threshold; but now I promise nothing. Sit down there, and say what you will.”
Ivan, seeing with whom he had to deal, sheathed his dagger again, sat down, and repeated his proposal.
“What security will you give me,” asked the Tchetchen, “for the fulfilment of your promise?”
“I will leave you the major himself,” Ivan answered; “do you think I would have suffered for fifteen months, and brought my master to you, to desert him?”
“That is all right, I believe you; but two hundred roubles is not enough: I must have four hundred.”
“Why not ask four thousand? it is easy enough; but I, who wish to keep my word, offer you two hundred, because I know where to get them, and not a copeck more. Do you want to make me deceive you?”
“Well, be it so; I agree to two hundred roubles; and you will return alone, and in three days?”
“Yes, alone, and in three days, I give you my word! But have you given me yours? is the major your guest?”
“He is my guest, and you as well, from this moment, you have my word for it.”
They shook hands and ran to fetch the major, whom they brought back half dead with cold and hunger.
Instead of going to Mozdok, Ivan, learning that he was nearer to Tchervelianskaya-Stanitsa, where there was a large body of Cossacks, went thither immediately. He had no difficulty in collecting the sum he needed. The good Cossacks, some of whom had been engaged in the unfortunate affair which had cost Kaskambo his liberty, clubbed together with alacrity to complete the ransom. On the day fixed, Ivan set out to go at last and set his master free, but the colonel who commanded the outpost, fearing some fresh treachery, did not allow him to return alone, and in spite of the agreement made with the Tchetchen he had him accompanied by some Cossacks.
This precaution again was nearly fatal to Kaskambo. From his first distant sight of the Cossack lances, his host thought himself betrayed, and, displaying at once the savage courage of his nation, he led the major, who was still ill, on to the roof of the house, bound him to a post, and placed himself opposite him, carbine in hand: “If you advance,” he shouted, when Ivan was within hearing, at the same time aiming at his prisoner, “if you make another step, I will blow out the major’s brains, and I have fifty cartridges for my enemies and the traitor who brings them.”
“You are not betrayed,” cried the denshchik, trembling for his master’s life; “they forced me to come back accompanied, but I have brought the two hundred roubles, and have kept my word.”
“Let the Cossacks withdraw,” added the Tchetchen, “or I will fire.”
Kaskambo himself begged the officer to retire. Ivan followed the detachment for some time and returned alone; but the suspicious brigand did not allow him to approach. He made him count out the roubles a hundred paces from the house, on the path, and ordered him to go away.
As soon as he had taken possession of them, he went back to the roof and threw himself down at the major’s feet, begging his pardon and imploring him to forget the ill treatment which, he said, he had been forced to make him suffer for his own safety. “I will only remember,” Kaskambo answered, “that I have been your guest and that you have kept your word to me; but, before asking my pardon, please begin by unfastening my bonds.” Instead of answering him, the Tchetchen, seeing Ivan returning, jumped from the roof and disappeared like lightning.
On the same day, honest Ivan had the pleasure and glory of restoring his master to the bosom of his friends, who had despaired of seeing him again.
The gleaner of this tale, a few months afterwards, at Yegorievski, passing, during the night, before a little house, handsome and very much lighted up, got out of his “kibitka,”[17] and approached a window to enjoy the sight of a very lively ball which was being given on the ground-floor. A young non-commissioned officer was also looking very attentively at what was going on inside the room.
“Who is giving the ball?” the traveller asked him.
“The major, who is being married.”
“What is the major’s name?”
“His name is Kaskambo.”
The traveller, knowing the strange story of that officer, congratulated himself on having yielded to his curiosity, and had pointed out to him the bridegroom, who, beaming with pleasure, forgot in that hour the Tchetchens and their cruelty.
“Show me, pray,” he again added, “the brave denshchik who delivered him.”
The non-commissioned officer, after hesitating for some time, answered, “It was myself.”
Doubly surprised at the encounter, and still more so at finding him so young, the traveller asked him his age. He had not yet completed his twentieth year, and had just received a gratuity, with the rank of a non-commissioned officer, as a reward for his courage and fidelity. This splendid fellow, after having voluntarily shared his master’s misfortunes, and restored him to life and liberty, was now rejoicing in his happiness, as he looked at his wedding-festivities through the window. But as the stranger expressed his surprise that he was not present at the merry making, taxing his former master with ingratitude on this score, Ivan gave him a black look, and re-entered the house whistling the tune of “Hey lully, hey lully.” He appeared soon afterwards in the ball-room, and the inquisitive stranger got into his kibitka again, very thankful to have escaped having his head split open with an axe.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] By this name is designated the succession of stations guarded by Russian troops between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, from the mouth of the Terek to that of the Kuban.
[9] Vladikavkaz comes from the Russian verb “vladeti,” which means “command, dominate.”
[10] Soldier-servant.
[11] He was called Ivan Smirnoff, a name which might be translated into French as “John the Gentile,” which contrasted strangely with his character, as we shall see by what follows.
[12] A familiar proverb of Russian soldiers in the moment of danger.
[13] A Russian drink; it is a kind of beer made with flour.
[14] A Russian word which corresponds to what is called in French “cap.”
[15] Mutton roasted in small pieces at the end of a stick.
[16] A cloak of impervious felt with long hair, rather like bearskin. The burka, the ordinary cloak of the Cossacks, is only made in their country: with it they brave with impunity the rain and mud of the bivouac.
[17] The kibitka is a carriage, the body of which, like that of a roughly-built barouche, is fixed directly on two axle-trees, and in winter on two runners forming a sledge; it is the ordinary travelling-carriage in Russia.
EL VERDUGO
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Midnight had just sounded from the belfry of the little town of Menda. At that moment a young French officer, who was leaning over the parapet of a long terrace, which ran along the edge of the gardens of the castle of Menda, seemed to be sunk in meditation more profound than was natural to the carelessness of military life; but it must be said at the same time that hour, place, and night were never more propitious to meditation. The clear sky of Spain spread an azure dome overhead. The sparkling of the stars and the soft light of the moon lit up a delightful valley, which unrolled itself invitingly at his feet. By supporting himself upon an orange-tree in blossom, the major could see, a hundred feet below him, the town of Menda, which seemed to have taken shelter from the north winds at the foot of the rock upon which the castle was built. Turning his head, he could observe the sea, its shining waters framing the prospect in a broad sheet of silver. The castle was lit up. The merry tumult of a ball, the strains of the orchestra, the laughter of some officers and their partners reached his ears, blended with the distant murmur of the waves. The coolness of the night imparted a sort of energy to his body, fatigued by the heat of the day. And, finally, the garden was planted with shrubs so odoriferous and flowers so sweet, that the young man felt as if plunged in a bath of perfumes.
The castle of Menda belonged to a grandee of Spain, who, together with his family, was then in residence. All that evening the elder of his daughters had regarded the officer with an interest characterized by such sadness, that the sentiment of compassion expressed by the Spaniard might well have been the cause of the Frenchman’s reverie. Clara was beautiful, and, although she had three brothers and a sister, the Marquis of Leganés’s possessions seemed considerable enough to lead Victor Marchand to believe that the young lady would have a rich dowry. But how presume to think that the daughter of an old man, the vainest in all Spain of his nobility, would be bestowed on the son of a Parisian grocer? Moreover, the French were hated. The Marquis having been suspected by General G..t..r, who was governor of the province, of organizing a movement in favour of Ferdinand VII, the battalion commanded by Victor Marchand had been stationed in the little town of Menda to overawe the neighbouring districts, which owed allegiance to the Marquis of Leganés. A recent dispatch from Marshal Ney had given reason to apprehend that the English might shortly attempt a landing on the coast, and had pointed out the Marquis as a man who kept in communication with the Cabinet in London. So, in spite of the good reception which the Spaniard had given to Victor Marchand and his soldiers, the young officer was constantly on his guard. As he made his way to the terrace, from which he intended to examine the state of the town and the districts committed to his oversight, he had asked himself how he ought to interpret the friendliness which the Marquis had never ceased to display towards him, and how the tranquillity of the country could be reconciled with his general’s disquietude; but for the last minute these thoughts had been driven from the young officer’s head by a sense of prudence, and by a very legitimate curiosity. He had just observed a considerable number of lights in the town. In spite of it being the feast of St. James, he had ordered, only that very morning, that fires were to be put out at the hour prescribed by his regulations. The castle alone had been exempted from this measure. He could see here and there the gleam of the bayonets of his soldiers at their usual posts; but the silence was most solemn, and nothing announced that the Spaniards were overcome by the intoxication of a feast. After trying to discover a reason for this infringement of which the townspeople were guilty, he found their contravention all the more mysterious and incomprehensible that he had left officers in charge of the night police and the rounds. With the impetuosity of youth, he was proceeding to slip through a gap, in order to descend the rocks rapidly, and thus arrive sooner than by the ordinary road at a small post stationed at the entrance to the town on the castle side, when a slight noise arrested him in his course. He thought he heard the gravel of the walk crunch beneath a woman’s light footstep. He turned his head and saw nothing, but his eye was arrested by the extraordinary brightness of the ocean. There, all of a sudden, he perceived a sight so ominous that he stood motionless with surprise, and refused to believe his senses. The silvery rays of the moon enabled him to distinguish some sails at a considerable distance. He trembled, and sought to convince himself that this vision was an optical delusion produced by the fantastic tricks of waves and moon. At that moment a hoarse voice uttered the name of the officer, who looked towards the gap, and there saw the head of the soldier whom he had ordered to accompany him to the castle slowly emerge.
“Is that you, commandant?”
“Yes. What is it?” was the whispered response of the young man, whom a sort of presentiment warned to proceed with secrecy.
“Those rascals down there are as restless as worms, and I hasten, with your leave, to report some little things I have observed.”
“Speak,” answered Victor Marchand.
“I have just been following a man from the castle, who came this way with a lantern in his hand. A lantern is terribly suspicious! I don’t think that there Christian requires to light candles at this time of night.—‛They mean to do for us,’ says I to myself, and I set about examining his heels. And so, commandant, I discovered a pretty heap of faggots on a rock two or three steps away.”
A terrible cry which all at once resounded from the town interrupted the soldier. A sudden gleam lit up the commandant. The poor grenadier received a bullet in his head and fell. A fire of straw and dry wood blazed up like a conflagration some ten paces from the young man. The instruments and laughter were no longer to be heard in the ball-room. A deathly silence, broken by occasional groans, had suddenly taken the place of the hum and music of the feast. A cannon-shot boomed across the silvery plain of the ocean. A cold sweat ran down the young officer’s forehead. He was without his sword. He understood that his soldiers had perished, and that the English were about to land. He saw himself dishonoured if he lived, he saw himself brought before a court-martial; then with his eye he measured the depth of the valley, and was about to dash himself down, when at that moment Clara’s hand seized his.
“Flee!” she said. “My brothers are coming behind me to kill you. At the foot of the rock yonder, you will find Juanito’s Andalusian. Go!”
She pushed him away; the young man gazed at her in stupefaction for one moment; but, soon obeying the instinct of self-preservation, which never forsakes any man, even the bravest, he dashed into the park in the direction indicated, and ran over rocks which only the goats had trodden hitherto. He heard Clara calling to her brothers to pursue him; he heard the steps of his assassins; he heard the bullets from several discharges whistle past his ears; but he reached the valley, found the horse, mounted it, and disappeared with the rapidity of lightning.
Some hours later, the young officer arrived at the quarters of General G..t..r, whom he found at dinner with his staff.
“I bring you my head!” exclaimed the major, as he made his appearance, pale and disordered.
He sat down and related the horrible adventure. His recital was received with appalling silence.
“I consider you more to be pitied than blamed,” the terrible general at length replied. “You are not answerable for the Spaniards’ crime; and provided the marshal does not decide otherwise I acquit you.”
These words afforded but very slight consolation to the unfortunate officer.
“When the emperor hears about it!” he exclaimed.
“He’ll want to have you shot,” said the general, “but we shall see. Now, let us say no more about it,” he added sternly, “except to exact a vengeance that will strike salutary terror into this country where they make war like savages.”
An hour later, a whole regiment of infantry, a detachment of cavalry and a train of artillery were on the march. The general and Victor marched at the head of the column. The soldiers, aware of the massacre of their comrades, were possessed with a fury without bounds. The distance which separated the town of Menda from the general headquarters was covered with miraculous rapidity. On the line of march, the general found whole villages under arms. Each of these miserable places was surrounded, and its inhabitants decimated.
By some inexplicable fatality, the English ships had remained hove to without advancing; but it was learned subsequently that these vessels had nothing on board but artillery, and had outsailed the other transports. Thus the town of Menda, deprived of its expected defenders, whom the appearance of the English sails had seemed to promise, was surrounded by the French troops almost without a blow being struck. The inhabitants, seized with terror, offered to surrender at discretion. With that devotion, instances of which have been not uncommon in the Peninsula, the assassins of the French, foreseeing from the notorious cruelty of the general that Menda would perhaps be committed to the flames and the inhabitants put to the sword, proposed to denounce themselves to the general. He accepted their offer, on condition that the inmates of the castle, from the humblest serving-man to the Marquis, should be delivered into his hands. This capitulation having been agreed to, the general promised to show mercy to the rest of the inhabitants, and to prevent his soldiers from pillaging or setting fire to the town. An enormous fine was imposed, and the richest inhabitants gave themselves up as prisoners to guarantee its payment, which had to be effected within twenty-four hours.
The general took all precautions necessary for the safety of his troops, saw to the defence of the district, and refused to billet his soldiers. After seeing them encamped, he went up to the castle, and took it into military occupation. The members of the Leganés family and the domestics were kept carefully under observation, bound, and shut up in the hall where the dance had taken place. From the windows of this apartment the terrace, which commanded the town, could easily be seen. The staff took up its quarters in an adjoining gallery, where the general at once held a council upon the measures to be taken to oppose the disembarkation. After having dispatched an aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, and ordered batteries to be established on the coast, the general and his staff proceeded to deal with the prisoners. Two hundred Spaniards whom the inhabitants had surrendered were shot out of hand on the terrace. After this military execution, the general ordered as many gallows to be erected as there were persons in the hall of the castle, and the town executioner to be sent for. Victor Marchand took advantage of the time until dinner to visit the prisoners. He was not long in returning to the general.
“I come,” he said with emotion, “to ask you some favours.”
“You!” retorted the general in a tone of bitter irony.
“Alas!” Victor responded, “They are sad favours I ask. When the Marquis saw you plant the gallows, he hoped that you would change the punishment to be inflicted on his family, and begs you to cause the nobles to be beheaded.”
“Very well!” said the general.
“They ask also to be allowed the consolations of religion, and to be set free from their bonds; they promise not to attempt to escape.”
“I agree to that,” said the general; “but you are responsible to me for them.”
“The old man also offers you all his fortune, if you will pardon his youngest son.”
“Indeed!” replied the general. “His estate already belongs to King Joseph.” He stopped. A look of contempt wrinkled his brow, and he added: “I’ll do more than he desires. I understand the importance of his last request. Well, he shall purchase the eternity of his name, but Spain shall always remember his treachery and its punishment! I grant his fortune and life to whichever of his sons will take the place of the executioner. Go, and say no more about it.”
Dinner was served. The officers at table satisfied an appetite which fatigue had sharpened. Only one of them, Victor Marchand, was absent from the feast. After long hesitation, he entered the apartment where the haughty family of Leganés was languishing, and cast a sorrowful look on the spectacle now presented by the hall, where only the other evening he had seen the heads of the two young women and the three young men whirling round as they were borne along in the waltz: he shuddered as he reflected that in a little they must roll severed by the executioner’s sabre. Bound to their gilded chairs, the father and mother, the three sons and the two daughters, remained in a state of complete immobility. Eight servants were standing, their hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen persons looked at one another gravely, and their eyes hardly betrayed the sentiments by which they were animated. On some brows profound resignation and regret at the failure of their enterprise might be read. Some motionless soldiers guarded them, and respected the grief of those cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity animated their visages when Victor made his appearance. He gave the order to unbind the prisoners, and himself proceeded to unfasten the cords which held Clara a prisoner in her chair. She smiled sadly. The officer could not help coming in contact with the young woman’s arms, while he admired her black hair and her supple form. She was a true Spaniard: she had the Spanish complexion, the Spanish eyes, with long curved lashes and a pupil blacker than the raven’s wing.
“Have you succeeded?” she asked, addressing him with one of those mournful smiles in which there is still some vestige of the young girl.
Victor could not restrain himself from groaning. He looked at the three brothers and Clara one by one. The first, and he was the eldest, was thirty years old. Short, rather badly built, with a proud and disdainful expression, he was not without a certain nobility of manner, and seemed no stranger to that delicacy of sentiment which once rendered Spanish gallantry so celebrated. He was called Juanito. The second, Philip, was aged about twenty. He resembled Clara. The youngest was eight years old. In Manuel’s features, a painter would have found something of that Roman constancy which David has bestowed upon the children in his republican scenes. The old Marquis had a head covered with white hair, which looked as if it had come out of one of Murillo’s pictures. At the sight, the young officer shook his head in despair of seeing the general’s bargain accepted by any one of those personages; nevertheless he ventured to confide it to Clara. At first the Spaniard shivered, but in an instant she recovered calmness, and went and knelt before her father.
“Oh!” she said to him. “Make Juanito swear that he will obey faithfully the orders which you will give him, and we shall be content.”
The Marchioness trembled with expectation; but, when she bent over to her husband and heard Clara’s horrible confidence, the mother fainted. Juanito understood all, he sprang up like a caged lion. Victor took upon himself to dismiss the soldiers, after having obtained an assurance of perfect submission from the Marquis. The domestics were led out and delivered to the executioner, who hanged them. When the family were observed by none but Victor, the old father rose.
“Juanito!” he said.
Juanito made no response but an inclination of the head which was equal to a refusal, fell back in his chair, and regarded his parents with a dry and terrible eye. Clara came and sat on his knee, and began gaily: “My dear Juanito,” she said, putting her arm round his neck and kissing him on his eyelids, “if you only knew how easy death will be to me if given by you! I shall not have to submit to the hateful touch of an executioner’s hands. You will cure me of the ills which awaited me, and—my good Juanito, you did not wish to see me belong to anybody, did you—?”
Her velvety eyes darted a glance of fire upon Victor, as if to rekindle in Juanito’s heart his horror of the French.
“Be brave,” his brother Philip said, “or else our race, which is almost royal, will be extinguished.”
Suddenly Clara rose, the group which had formed about Juanito broke up; and the son, justifiably mutinous, saw erect before him his old father, who exclaimed solemnly: “Juanito, I command you!”
The young man remained motionless, his father fell on his knees. Involuntarily, Clara, Manuel and Philip followed his example. All stretched out their hands to him who should save their family from oblivion, and seemed to repeat these words of their father: “My son, will you prove lacking in Spanish energy and right feeling? Do you wish me to remain long on my knees, and ought you to consider your own life and your own sufferings?... Is this my son, madam?” added the old man, turning to the Marchioness.
“He consents!” exclaimed his mother in despair, observing Juanito move his eyebrows in a fashion of which only she understood the significance.
Mariquita, the second daughter, knelt and clasped her mother in her feeble arms; and, as she wept scalding tears, her little brother Manuel came to scold her. At that moment the almoner of the castle entered; he was at once surrounded by the whole family, they led him to Juanito. Unable to endure the scene any longer, Victor made a sign to Clara, and hastened to go and try a last effort with the general. He found him in good humour, in the middle of the feast, and drinking with his officers, who were beginning to exchange merry remarks.
An hour later, a hundred of the most notable inhabitants of Menda came up to the terrace, according to the general’s orders, to be witnesses of the execution of the family of Leganés. A detachment of soldiers was posted to keep back the Spaniards, who were drawn up beneath the gallows on which the Marquis’s domestics had been hanged. The heads of the townsmen almost touched the feet of those martyrs. Thirty paces distant from them, a block rose, and a scimitar gleamed. The executioner was there in case of a refusal on the part of Juanito. Soon, amid the most profound silence, the Spaniards heard the footsteps of several persons, the measured sound of the march of a picket of soldiers, and the slight rattle of their muskets. These different sounds were blended with the merry accents from the officers’ mess, as the dance-music of the ball had disguised the preparations for the sanguinary treachery of the other night. All eyes were turned towards the Castle, and they saw the noble family advancing with incredible firmness. Every brow was calm and serene. One man only, pale and in disorder, leaned on the priest, who expended all the consolations of religion on this man, the only one who was to live. The executioner understood, as did every one else, that Juanito had taken his place for a day. The old Marquis and his wife, Clara, Mariquita, and their two brothers, came and knelt a few paces from the fatal spot. Juanito was led by the priest. When he arrived at the block, the executioner, taking him by the sleeve, drew him aside, and gave him, probably, some instructions. The confessor placed the victims in such a position that they could not see the executions. But they were true Spaniards, and held themselves erect and unfaltering.
Clara darted first to her brother. “Juanito,” she said to him, “have pity on my want of courage, and begin with me!”
At that moment, the precipitate steps of a man resounded. Victor arrived on the place of this scene. Clara had already knelt down, her white neck invited the scimitar. The officer turned pale, but he found strength to hasten up to her.
“The General grants you your life, if you will marry me,” he said to her in an undertone.
The Spaniard darted a look of contempt and pride at the officer. “Go on, Juanito!” she said in deep accents.
Her head rolled at Victor’s feet. The Marchioness of Leganés let a convulsive movement escape her when she heard the sound; it was the only sign of her grief.
“Am I right like this, my good Juanito?” was the demand which little Manuel made of his brother.
“Ah, you weep, Mariquita!” said Juanito to his sister.
“Oh, yes!” responded the young girl. “I am thinking of you, my poor Juanito: you will be very unhappy without us!”
Soon the tall figure of the Marquis appeared. He gazed upon the blood of his children, turned towards the hushed and motionless spectators, stretched out his hands towards Juanito, and said in a loud voice: “Spaniards, I give my son his father’s blessing! Now Marquis, strike without fear, you are without reproach.”
But when Juanito saw his mother approach supported by the confessor, he exclaimed: “She nursed me!”
His voice drew a cry of horror from the assemblage. The din of the feast and the merry laughter of the officers were hushed at the terrible clamour. The Marchioness understood that Juanito’s courage was exhausted, with one bound, she leaped over the balustrade, to dash her brains out on the rocks below. A cry of admiration arose. Juanito had fallen unconscious.
“General,” said a half-drunken officer, “Marchand has just been telling me something of this execution. I bet you did not order it....”
“Do you forget, gentlemen,” exclaimed General G..t..r, “that, in a month, five hundred French families will be in tears, and that we are in Spain? Do you wish us to leave our bones here?”
After that address there was no one, not even a sub-lieutenant, who dared to empty his glass.
In spite of the respect with which he is everywhere regarded, in spite of the title of El Verdugo (The Executioner) which the King of Spain has granted as a title of honour to the Marquis of Leganés, he is consumed by regrets, he lives in retirement and shows himself rarely. Bowed down by the burden of his splendid crime, he seems to be waiting impatiently until the birth of a second son gives him the right to rejoin the shades who accompany him incessantly.
LAURETTE, OR, THE RED SEAL
COUNT ALFRED DE VIGNY
I
OF THE MEETING WHICH BEFELL ME ONE DAY
ON THE HIGH ROAD
The high road through Artois and Flanders is long and dreary. It stretches in a straight line, without trees, without ditches, through flat fields that are always full of yellow mud. In the month of March, 1815, I travelled along this road, and a meeting befell me which I have never forgotten since.
I was alone, on horseback, I was wearing a handsome white cloak, a red uniform, a black helmet, pistols and a big sabre; it had been raining in torrents for the last four days and nights of my journey, and I remember that I was singing “Joconde” at the top of my voice. I was so young!—The King’s household, in 1814, had been filled up with children and grandsires; the Emperor seemed to have taken all the men and killed them.
My comrades were in front, on the road, in the train of King Louis XVII.; I saw their white clocks and red uniforms, right away on the northern horizon; Bonaparte’s lancers, who were watching and following our retreat step by step, from time to time showed the tricolour pennons of their lances on the opposite sky-line. A lost shoe had delayed my horse; he was young and strong, and I urged him on, so that I might rejoin my squadron; he set off at a rapid trot. I put my hand to my belt,—it was well enough furnished with gold pieces; I heard the iron scabbard of my sabre ringing against the stirrup, and I felt very proud and perfectly happy.
It was still raining, and I was still singing. However, I soon grew silent, tired of hearing no one but myself, and I no longer heard anything but the rain and the hoofs of my horse, which was floundering in the ruts. The road was unpaved; I was sinking, and was obliged to go at a walk. My top-boots were covered, outside, with a thick crust of mud as yellow as ochre; inside they were filling with rain. I looked at my brand-new gold epaulettes, my joy and comfort; they were roughened by the wet, which distressed me.
My horse lowered his head; I did the same: I began to think, and to wonder, for the first time, where I was going. I knew absolutely nothing about it; but that did not trouble me long: I was certain that, my squadron being there, there was my duty also. Feeling at my heart a deep, unchangeable calm, I gave thanks for it to the indescribable sense of Duty, and I tried to explain it to myself. Seeing at close quarters how unaccustomed fatigues were gaily borne by heads so fair, or so white, how a secure future was so cavalierly risked by so many prosperous men of the world, and taking my share in that miraculous satisfaction which is imparted to every man by the conviction that he cannot evade any debt of Honour, I concluded that an easier and more common thing than people imagine, is Self-sacrifice.
I wondered whether Self-sacrifice was not a feeling innate in us; what was this need of obeying, and resigning our will into another’s hands, as if it were a heavy and wearisome load; whence came the secret happiness at being rid of this burden, and why human pride had never rebelled against it. I saw clearly how this mysterious instinct bound peoples together, everywhere, into powerful unions, but nowhere did I see, so entire and so formidable as in Armies, this renunciation of individual actions, words, wishes and almost of thoughts. I saw resistance possible and usual everywhere, the citizen, in all places, practising a discerning and intelligent obedience which examines into matters, and may be suspended. I saw how even the wife’s tender submission ends as soon as she is bidden to do wrong, and how the law defends her; but military obedience, passive and active at one and the same time, receiving the order and carrying it out, striking, with eyes shut, like the ancient Destiny! I traced the possible consequences of the soldier’s Self-sacrifice, irretrievable, unconditional, and sometimes leading to terrible duties.
Thus I thought as I journeyed on at my horse’s pleasure, looking at the time by my watch, and seeing the road still stretching out in a straight line, without a tree or a house, and cutting the plain as far as eye could see, like a broad yellow stripe on a grey canvas. Sometimes the watery stripe blended with the watery earth around it, and, when a rather less pallid light illuminated this desolate stretch of country, I saw myself in the midst of a muddy sea, following a current of slime and plaster.
As I carefully examined this yellow stripe of road, I noticed on it, about a quarter of a league off, a little black moving speck. This gave me pleasure,—it was somebody. I saw that this black speck was going like myself in the direction of Lille, and that it was travelling in a zigzag, a sign of a laborious journey. I accelerated my pace and gained on this object, which lengthened somewhat and grew larger beneath my gaze. I resumed a trot on firmer ground, and thought I made out a kind of small black vehicle. I was hungry, I hoped that it was a canteen-woman’s cart, and, regarding my poor horse as a boat, I rowed it with all my might to reach that fortunate isle, in that sea wherein at times it sank up to the middle.
A hundred paces off, I was able to distinguish clearly a little white wooden cart, covered with three hoops and with black oilcloth. It looked like a little cradle set on two wheels. The wheels were sunk in the mud up to the axle-trees; a little mule which drew them was laboriously led by a man on foot who held the bridle. I drew near and viewed him with attention.
He was a man of about fifty, with a white moustache, tall and strong, with back bent like those old infantry officers who have carried the knapsack. He wore their uniform, and you caught a glimpse of a major’s epaulette under a short blue cloak, much worn. His face was rugged, but kind, as so many are in the army. He looked at me sideways under his thick black eyebrows, and briskly drew from his cart a gun, which he cocked, at the same time crossing to the other side of his mule, of which he made a rampart. Having seen his white cockade, I contented myself with showing the sleeve of my red uniform, and he replaced his gun in the cart, saying:
“Ah! that makes a difference, I took you for one of those fellows who are chasing us. Will you have a drink?”
“With pleasure,” I said, approaching him, “I have drunk nothing for twenty-four hours.”
He had hanging from his neck a cocoa-nut, very finely carved, contrived as a flask, with a silver neck, and he seemed rather proud of it. He passed it to me, and I drank a little poor white wine from it with great enjoyment; I returned the cocoa-nut to him.
“To the health of the King!” he said as he drank; “he made me an officer of the Legion of Honour, it is only fair that I should follow him to the frontier. Indeed, as I have only my epaulette to live by, I shall afterwards resume command of my battalion, it is my duty.”
So speaking, as if to himself, he started his little mule once more, saying that we had no time to lose; and, as I was of his opinion, I set off again along with him. I looked at him continually without questioning him, never having cared for the indiscreet chatter so common amongst us.
We went on without speaking for about a quarter of a league. As he stopped then to give a rest to his little mule, which it pained me to see, I stopped too and tried to squeeze from my riding-boots the water which filled them, as if they were two wells in which my legs had been soaked.
“Your boots are beginning to stick to your feet,” he said.
“I have not had them off for four nights,” I told him.
“Pooh! in a week you won’t notice it,” he rejoined in his hoarse voice; “it is something to be alone, you know, in times like those we live in. Do you know what I have in there?”
“No,” I said.
“A woman.”
I said “Oh!” without too much surprise, and marched on calmly, at a walking pace. He followed me.
“That wretched wheelbarrow didn’t cost me much,” he went on, “nor the mule either; but it is all I need, though this road is a devil of a pull.”
I offered him my horse to mount when he felt tired; and as I only talked to him gravely and simply of his turn-out, for which he feared mockery, he suddenly put himself at his ease, and, coming near my stirrup, slapped me on the knee, saying:
“Well, you’re a good lad, though you are in the Reds.”
From his bitter tone, in thus designating the four Red Companies, I gathered what malignant prejudices had been aroused in the army by the luxury and the commissions of these corps of officers.
“However,” he added, “I shall not accept your offer, seeing that I cannot ride, and that that’s not my business.”
“But, major, superior officers like yourself have to do so.”
“Pooh! once a year at the inspection, and then on a hired horse. I have always been a sailor, and since then a foot-soldier; I don’t understand horsemanship.”
He walked twenty paces, looking at me sideways from time to time, as if expecting a question: and as no word was forthcoming he continued:
“You aren’t inquisitive, upon my word! What I said just now should have surprised you.”
“I am seldom surprised,” said I.
“Oh! but if I told you how I left off being a sailor, we should see.”
“Well,” I replied, “why don’t you try? it will warm you, and make me forget that the rain is soaking into my back and only stopping at my heels.”
The good major solemnly prepared to speak, with all the pleasure of a child. He adjusted his oilcloth-covered shako on his head, and jerked his shoulder in a way that no one who has not served in the infantry can picture, in the way that a foot-soldier does to lift his knapsack and lighten its weight for a moment; it is a soldier’s custom, which, in an officer, becomes a bad habit. After this convulsive gesture, he again drank a little wine from his cocoa-nut, gave the little mule an encouraging kick in the stomach, and began.
II
THE STORY OF THE RED SEAL
You must know first of all, my lad, that I was born at Brest; I began as a soldier’s son, earning my half-rations and half-pay from the time I was nine years old, my father being a private in the Guards. But, as I loved the sea, one fine night, while I was on leave at Brest, I hid in the bottom of the hold of a merchant vessel leaving for the Indies; they only discovered me in mid-ocean, and the captain preferred making me a cabin-boy to throwing me overboard. When the Revolution came, I had made some progress, and in my turn had become captain of a neat enough little merchant vessel, having scoured the sea for fifteen years. When the ex-royal navy, a fine old navy too, by Jove! suddenly found itself without officers, they took some captains from the merchant navy. I had had some skirmishes with buccaneers of which I may tell you later; they put me in command of a brig of war named the “Marat.”
On the 28th of Fructidor, 1797, I received orders to set sail for Cayenne. I had to take there sixty soldiers and a man sentenced to transportation, who was left over from the hundred and ninety-three whom the frigate “Decade” had taken on board some days before. I was ordered to treat this individual with consideration, and in the Directory’s first letter was enclosed a second, sealed with three red seals, in the midst of which was one very large. I was forbidden to open this letter before reaching the first degree of north latitude, between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of longitude, that is to say, when just about to cross the line.
This big letter had a quite peculiar appearance. It was long, and so tightly shut that I could read nothing between the corners or through the envelope. I am not superstitious, but that letter frightened me. I put it in my room under the glass of a wretched little English clock which was nailed over my bed. That bed was a real sailor’s bed, you know what they are like. But what am I talking about? You are sixteen at the very most, you can’t have seen one.
A queen’s room cannot be arranged as neatly as a sailor’s, I say it without any wish to boast. Everything has its own little place and its own little nail. Nothing can move about. The vessel may roll as it pleases, without displacing anything. The furniture is made to suit the shape of the ship and of your own little room. My bed was a chest. When it was open, I slept in it; when it was shut, it was my sofa, and I smoked my pipe on it. Sometimes it was my table; then we sat on two little casks which were in the room. My floor was waxed and scrubbed like mahogany, and shone like a jewel: a real mirror! Oh! it was a pretty little room! And my brig certainly had its value as well. We often enjoyed ourselves famously there, and the voyage began pleasantly enough that time, had it not been.... But we must not anticipate.
We had a good north-north-west wind, and I was engaged in putting the letter under the glass of my clock, when my “convict” entered my room; he was holding the hand of a pretty young thing of about seventeen. He told me that he was nineteen; a handsome fellow, though rather pale, and too fair-skinned for a man. He was a man all the same; and a man who conducted himself, when occasion arose, better than many old ones would have done, as you will see. He held his little wife by the arm; she was as fresh and gay as a child. They looked like two turtle-doves. To me it was a pleasant sight. I said to them:
“Well, children! you have come to pay the old captain a visit: it is charming of you. I am taking you rather a long way; but so much the better, we shall have time to get to know one another. I am sorry to receive the lady without my coat; but I was going to nail this great rascal of a letter up there. Perhaps you would give me a hand?”
They really were good little things. The little husband took the hammer, and the little wife the nails, and they passed them to me as I asked for them; and she said to me: “Right! left! captain!” laughing because the pitching of the ship made my clock toss about. I can still hear her even now with her little voice: “Left! right! captain!” She was laughing at me.—” Ah!” I said, “you little mischief! I will make your husband scold you, I will!” Then she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. They really were charming, and that was the way we became acquainted. We were good friends at once.
It was a good crossing too. I always had weather that might have been made for me. As I had never had any but black faces on my ship, I made my two little lovers come to my table every day. It cheered me up. When we had eaten the biscuits and fish, the little wife and her husband kept on looking at each other as if they had never seen each other before. Then I would begin to laugh with all my heart and make fun of them. They laughed too with me. You would have laughed to see us like three lunatics, not knowing what was the matter with us. It was really pleasant to see them loving each other like that! They were happy everywhere; they liked all that was given to them. Yet they were allowanced like all the rest of us; I only added a little Swedish brandy when they dined with me, just a small glass, to keep up my rank. They slept in a hammock, in which the ship rolled them about like those two pears I have there in my wet handkerchief. They were brisk and contented. I was like you, I asked no questions. What need was there for me, a ferryman, to know their name and business? I was carrying them from the other side of the sea, as I would have carried two birds of paradise.
At the end of a month, I had got to look on them as my children. All day long, when I called them, they would come to sit with me. The young man wrote at my table, that is to say on my bed; and, when I wished, he helped me to take my “reckoning.” He soon knew how to do it as well as I; I was sometimes quite amazed at it. The young wife would sit on a little cask and begin to sew.
One day that they were settled like this I said to them:
“Do you know, my little friends, that we make a family picture, as we are now? I don’t want to question you, but probably you haven’t more money than you need, and you are pretty delicate, both of you, to dig and use the pick as the convicts at Cayenne do. It is a wretched country, I can tell you that with all my heart; but I, who am an old wizened tar dried up by the sun, I should live there like a lord. If you had, as it seems to me (without wishing to question you) that you do have, a little liking for me, I should be willing enough to leave my old brig, which is now no better than an old tub, and I would settle there with you, if you like. I have no family but a dog, which is a grief to me; you would be a little company for me. I would help you in many things; and I have got together a good stock of goods honestly enough smuggled, on which we should live, and which I should leave you when I came to turn up my toes, as they say in polite society.”
They sat staring at one another quite amazed, looking as if they thought I was not speaking the truth; and the little woman ran, as she always did, and threw her arms round the other’s neck, and sat on his knees, quite red in the face, and crying. He hugged her tightly, and I saw tears in his eyes as well; he held out his hand to me, and turned paler than usual. She whispered to him, and her long fair locks fell over his shoulder; her hair had come untwisted like a rope suddenly uncoiled, for she was as lively as a fish: that hair, if only you could have seen it! it was like gold. As they kept on whispering, the young man kissing her brow from time to time, and she weeping, I grew impatient:
“Well, would that suit you?” I said to them at last.
“But ... but, captain, you are very kind,” said the husband, “but the fact is ... you could not live with convicts, and....” He looked down.
“I don’t know,” I said, “what you have done to get transported, but you’ll tell me that some day, or not at all, if you’d prefer. You don’t look to me as if your consciences were very heavy, and I’m quite sure that I’ve done many worse things than you in my life, so there, you poor innocents. Of course while you are in my custody, I shall not release you, you mustn’t expect it; I would sooner cut off your heads like two pigeons’. But, the epaulette once laid aside, I no longer know either admiral or anything else.”
“The fact is,” he answered, sadly shaking his dark head, dark, although powdered a little, as was still the fashion at that time, “the fact is I think it would be dangerous for you, captain, to seem to know us. We laugh because we are young; we look happy because we love each other; but I have some bad moments when I think of the future, and cannot tell what will happen to my poor Laura.”
Again he pressed his young wife’s head to his bosom:
“That was really what I was bound to say to the captain; would not you have said the same thing, child?”
I took my pipe and got up, because I was beginning to feel my eyes rather moist, and that doesn’t suit me.
“Come! come!” I said, “things will clear themselves up later on. If the lady objects to tobacco, her withdrawal would oblige.”
She got up, her face all flaming and wet with tears, like a child that has been scolded.
“Anyhow,” she said to me, looking at my clock, “you are forgetting, you people; what about the letter!”
I felt something which affected me powerfully. I seemed to have a pain in my hair when she said that to me.
“Good Heavens! I had quite forgotten about it,” I said. “Ah! upon my word, this is a pretty business! If we had passed the first degree of north latitude, there would be nothing more for me to do but to throw myself into the water.—Just to make me happy, the child reminds me of that villainous letter!”
I looked quickly at my chart, and, when I saw that we had a week at least still to go, my head was relieved, but my heart, without my knowing why, was not.
“The fact is that the Directory doesn’t treat the question of obedience as a joke!” I said. “Come, I am posted up this time again. The time went past so quickly that I had quite forgotten that.”
Well, sir, we all three remained with our noses in the air looking at the letter, as if it was going to speak to us. What struck me a good deal was, that the sun, which slipped in through the skylight, was lighting up the glass of the clock, and showed up the big red seal, and the other little ones, like the features of a face in the midst of the fire.
“Wouldn’t you say that its eyes were jumping out of its head?” I said to amuse them.
“Oh! my friend,” said the young wife, “it looks like spots of blood.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said her husband, taking her arm, “you are wrong, Laura; it looks like a circular to announce a wedding. Come and rest, come along; why does the letter trouble you?”
They ran away as if a ghost had followed them, and went up on deck. I remained alone with the big letter, and I remember that as I smoked my pipe I kept looking at it, as if its red eyes held mine fast, sucking them in as a serpent’s eyes do. Its great pale face, its third seal, bigger than the eyes, wide open, gaping like the jaws of a wolf ... all that put me in a bad temper; I took my coat and hung it on the clock, so as not to see any more either the time or the brute of a letter.
I went to finish my pipe on deck. I stayed there till nightfall.
We were then off the Cape Verde Islands. The “Marat” was shooting along, sailing before the wind, at ten knots, without inconveniencing herself. The night was the finest I have seen in my life near the tropic. The moon was rising above the horizon, as large as a sun; the sea cut it in half, and turned quite white like a sheet of snow covered with little diamonds. I looked at this as I smoked, sitting on my seat. The officer of the watch and the sailors said nothing, and like me watched the shadow of the brig on the water. I was pleased at hearing nothing. I like silence and order. I had forbidden any noise and any fire. I caught a glimpse, however, of a little red line almost under my feet. I should have flown into a rage at once; but, as it was coming from my little “convicts,” I wanted to make sure of what they were doing before I got angry. I had only the trouble of stooping down, and I could see, through the big skylight, into the little room: and I looked.
The young wife was on her knees, saying her prayers. There was a little lamp that threw its light on her. She was in her nightgown; I could see from above her bare shoulders, her little bare feet, and her long fair hair, all dishevelled. I thought of drawing back, but I said to myself: “Pooh! an old soldier, what does he matter?” And I continued watching.
Her husband was sitting on a little trunk, his head on his hands, watching her as she prayed. She raised her head upwards, as if to heaven, and I saw her big blue eyes wet like those of a Magdalene. While she prayed, he took the ends of her long tresses and kissed them noiselessly. When she had finished, she made the sign of the cross, smiling as if she were entering paradise. I saw that he made the sign of the cross like her, but as if he were ashamed of it. In fact, for a man it is odd.
She stood up, kissed him, and stretched herself out the first in her hammock, into which he lifted her without a word, as you put a child into a swing. The heat was stifling; she felt herself pleasantly lulled by the motion of the ship, and seemed already to be falling asleep. Her little white feet were crossed and raised to a level with her head, and her whole body wrapped in her long white nightgown. She was a dear, she was!
“My love,” she said, half asleep, “are you not sleepy? Do you know it’s very late?”
He still remained with his brow on his hands, not answering. This troubled her a little, the good little soul, and she put her pretty head out of the hammock, like a bird’s out of its nest, and looked at him with parted lips, not daring to speak again.
At last he said to her:
“Ah! my dear Laura, as we draw nearer to America, I cannot help growing sadder. I don’t know why, but it seems to me that the happiest time of our life will have been that of the voyage.”
“I think so too,” she said; “I should like never to get there.”
He looked at her, clasping his hands with a rapture which you cannot imagine.
“And yet, my angel, you always weep as you pray to God,” he said; “that grieves me very much, for I know well of what people you are thinking, and I believe that you regret what you have done.”
“I, regret it!” she said, looking very hurt; “I, regret having followed you, my beloved! Do you think that, because I have belonged to you such a little while, I love you the less? Is one not a woman, does not one know one’s duty, at seventeen? Did not my mother and sisters say that it was my duty to follow you to Guiana? Did they not say that in that I was doing nothing surprising? I am only surprised that it should have touched you, my love; it is all natural. And now I don’t know how you can think that I regret anything, when I am with you to help you to live, or to die with you if you die!”
She said all that in a voice so soft that you would have thought it was music. I was quite touched by it, and said:
“You’re a good little woman, you are!”
The young man began to sigh and tap the floor with his foot, as he kissed a pretty hand and bare arm that she held out to him.
“Oh! Laurette, my Laurette!” he said, “when I think that, if we had delayed our marriage for four days, I should have been arrested alone and should have departed alone, I cannot forgive myself.”
Then the little beauty stretched out of the hammock her pretty white arms, bare to the shoulders, and stroked his brow, his hair, and his eyes, taking his head as if she would carry it away and hide it in her bosom. She smiled like a child, and said to him a lot of little womanly things, the like of which I had never heard before. She closed his mouth with her fingers so that only she could speak. She said, playfully taking her long hair like a handkerchief to wipe his eyes:
“Tell me, is it not much better to have with you a woman who loves you, my beloved? I am quite pleased, myself, to go to Cayenne; I shall see savages and cocoa-palms like Paul and Virginia’s, shan’t I? We shall each plant our own. We shall see which will be the better gardener. We’ll make a little hut for us two. I will work all day and all night, if you like. I am strong; see, look at my arms;—see, I could almost lift you. Don’t laugh at me; I can embroider very well, besides; and is there not a town somewhere thereabouts where they need embroiderers? I will give lessons in drawing and music if they want them too; and, if they can read there, you will write.”
I remember that the poor fellow was in such despair that he gave a great cry when she said that.
“Write!”—he exclaimed,—” write!”
And he grasped the wrist of his right hand with his left.
“Oh! write! why did I ever learn to write? Write! why it’s a madman’s trade!...—I believed in their liberty of the press!—Where did I get my brains! Eh! and for what? to print five or six poor commonplace ideas, only read by those who like them, thrown in the fire by those who hate them, of no use but to cause us to be persecuted! It doesn’t matter for me; but you, lovely angel, become a woman scarcely four days ago! Explain to me, I beg of you, how it was I allowed you to be so good as to follow me here? Do you know at all where you are, poor little one? And do you know where you are going? Soon, child, you will be sixteen hundred leagues from your mother and sisters ... and for me! all that for me!”
She hid her head for a moment in the hammock; and I from above saw that she was crying; but he below did not see her face; and, when she withdrew it from the sheet, it was with a smile to make him cheerful.
“It’s true, we’re not rich just now,” she said, and burst out laughing; “see, look at my purse, I have no more than one single louis left. What have you?”
He began to laugh too like a child:
“On my word, I had a crown left, but I gave it to the little boy who carried your box.”
“Oh, pooh! what does that matter”! she said snapping her little white fingers like castanets; “one is never gayer than when one has nothing; and haven’t I in reserve the two diamond rings that my mother gave me? those are good anywhere, and for anything, aren’t they? When you wish, we will sell them. Besides, I think that the dear good captain hasn’t told us all his kind intentions towards us, and that he knows quite well what is in the letter. It is surely a recommendation for us to the governor of Cayenne.”
“Perhaps,” he said; “who knows?”
“Isn’t it?” his little wife went on; “you are so good, that I’m sure that the government has exiled you for a little time, but isn’t angry with you.”
She had said that so well! calling me the dear good captain, that I was quite moved and softened by it; and I even rejoiced in my heart, that she had perhaps guessed rightly about the sealed letter. They began again to kiss one another; I stamped sharply on the deck to make them stop.
I shouted to them:
“Hi! come now, my little friends! the order has been given that all lights on this vessel are to be put out. Blow out your light, if you please.”
They blew out the lamp, and I heard them laugh and chatter in whispers in the dark like school-children. I began again to walk up and down alone on my deck, smoking my pipe. All the stars of the tropics were at their posts, as big as little moons. I looked at them, and breathed in air which felt fresh and pleasant.
I said to myself that the good little things had certainly guessed the truth, and I was quite cheered up by this. It was indeed to be wagered that one of the five Directors had changed his mind and recommended them to me; I didn’t very well explain to myself why, for there are affairs of state that I for my part have never understood; but, in short, I believed it, and, without knowing why, I was satisfied.
I went down to my room, and went to look at the letter under my old uniform coat. It had a different face: it seemed to me to laugh, and its seals looked rose-coloured. I no longer doubted its good nature, and made it a little signal of friendship.
In spite of that, I put my coat back on the top of it; it worried me. We never thought of looking at it at all for some days, and we were cheerful; but, when we approached the first degree of latitude, we began to stop talking.
One fine morning, I woke rather surprised at feeling no motion in the ship. To tell the truth, I always sleep with one eye open, as they say, and, as I missed the rolling, I opened them both. We had fallen on a dead calm, and it was below the first degree of north latitude, at the 27th of longitude. I put my nose above deck: the sea was as smooth as a bowl of oil; all the spread sails were fallen, clinging to the masts like empty balloons. I said at once: “Come, I shall have time to read you!” looking sideways in the direction of the letter. I waited till evening, at sunset. However, it had to be done: I opened the clock, and hastily pulled out the sealed order.—Well, my dear fellow, I held it in my hands for a quarter of an hour, without being able to read it. At last I said to myself: “This is too much!” and I broke the three seals with my thumb; and, as for the big red seal, I ground it into dust.
After I had read I rubbed my eyes, thinking I had made a mistake.
I re-read the whole letter; I re-read it again; I began once more taking the last line and going back to the first. I didn’t believe it. My legs were shaking under me a little, I sat down; I had a sort of quivering on the skin of my face; I rubbed my cheeks a little with rum, I put some in the hollow of my hands, I pitied myself for being so foolish; but it only lasted a moment; I went up to get some air.
Laurette was so pretty that day, that I didn’t wish to go near her: she had a little white frock, quite plain, her arms bare to the neck, and her long hair loose as she always wore it. She was amusing herself with dipping her other dress into the sea at the end of a string, and laughed as she tried to catch the sea-wrack, a plant that looks like bunches of grapes, and floats on the water in the tropics.
“Do come and see the grapes! come quickly!” she was crying; and her lover leaned on her and bent down, and did not look at the water, for he was looking at her very tenderly.
I signed to the young man to come and speak to me on the quarter-deck. She turned round. I don’t know what I looked like, but she let her string fall; she seized him violently by the arm, and said:
“Oh! don’t go, he is quite pale.”
That might well be; there was something to be pale about. Nevertheless he came to me on the quarter-deck; she looked at us, leaning against the mainmast. For a long time we walked up and down without saying anything. I was smoking a cigar which seemed to me bitter, and I spat it into the water. His eye followed me; I took his arm; I was choking, truly, on my word of honour! I was choking.
“Let us see!” I said to him at last, “tell me now, my little friend, tell me a little of your history. What the devil have you done to those dogs of lawyers who are there like five bits of a king? It seems that they are mightily angry with you! It’s strange!”
He shrugged his shoulders, inclining his head (with such a gentle look, poor fellow!), and said:
“On my soul! captain, nothing much, after all: three verses of a ballad on the Directory, that’s all.”
“Impossible!!” I said.
“On my soul, yes! The verses weren’t even very good. I was arrested on the 15th of Fructidor and taken to La Force, tried on the 16th, and condemned to death at first, then to transportation as a favour.”
“Strange!” I said. “The Directors are very touchy fellows: for that letter you know of orders me to shoot you.”
He did not answer, and smiled, keeping his countenance pretty well for a young man of nineteen. He only looked at his wife, and wiped his brow, from which drops of sweat were falling. I had as much at least on my face, and drops of another kind in my eyes.
I went on:
“It appears that those citizens didn’t want to do for you on land, they thought that here it wouldn’t be noticed so much. But it’s very distressing for me; for it’s no use your being a good fellow, I cannot get out of it; the sentence of death is there in due form, and the warrant for execution signed, paraphed, and sealed; nothing is wanting.”
He bowed to me very politely, reddening.
“I ask nothing, captain,” he said in a voice as gentle as ever; “I should be very sorry to make you fail in your duty. I should only like to speak a little to Laura, and to beg you to protect her in the event of her surviving me, which I don’t think likely.”
“Oh! as for that, it’s all right, my lad,” I said to him; “if you have no objection, I will take her to her family on my return to France, and will only leave her when she no longer wishes to see me. But, in my opinion, you can flatter yourself that she won’t recover from that blow; poor little woman!”
He took both my hands, and pressed them, saying to me:
“My good captain, you are suffering more than I from what remains for you to do, I know very well; but what can we do? I can count on you to keep for her the little that belongs to me, to protect her, to see that she receives whatever her old mother may leave her, can I not? to defend her life, her honour, can I not? and also to see that her health is always cared for.—Stay,” he added in a lower tone, “I must tell you that she is very delicate; often her chest is so much affected that she faints several times in a day; she must always be well wrapped up. In fact you will take the place of her father, her mother, and myself as much as possible, is that not so? If she could keep the rings that her mother gave her, I should be very glad. But, if it is needful to sell them for her, it must certainly be done. My poor Laurette! see how beautiful she is!”
As things were beginning to get too affecting, I was worried, and began to frown; I had spoken to him cheerfully to prevent myself growing weak; but I was no longer anxious about that: “Come, enough!” I said to him, “honest folk understand each other well enough. Go and speak to her, and let us make haste.”
I pressed his hand in a friendly way, and, as he did not let mine go and kept looking at me in a peculiar manner: “Let me see!” I added, “if I have any advice to give you, it is not to speak to her of this. We will arrange the matter without her expecting it, or you either, so be at ease; that’s my affair!”
“Ah! that makes a difference,” he said, “I didn’t know ... that will be better certainly. Besides, the good-byes! the good-byes! they weaken one.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “don’t be a child, it’s better so. Don’t kiss her, my friend, don’t kiss her, if you can manage it, or you are lost.”
I gave him my hand again, and let him go. Oh! it was very hard for me, all that.
It seemed to me, upon my word, that he kept the secret well; for they walked up and down, arm in arm, for a quarter of an hour, and they came back to the ship’s side to get the string and the dress, which one of my cabin-boys had fished up.
Night fell suddenly. It was the moment I had decided to seize. But that moment has lasted for me up to this very day, and I shall drag it after me all my life like a chain and ball.
Here the old major was obliged to stop. I took care not to speak, for fear of diverting his thoughts; he continued, beating his breast:
That moment, I tell you, I cannot yet understand. I felt my rage mounting to my very hair, and, at the same time, something or other made me obey and urged me onward. I called the officers and said to one of them:
“Come, launch a boat ... since we are now executioners! You will put that woman in it, and will take her out into the ocean until you hear guns going off. Then you will return.” To obey a scrap of paper! for that was really all it was! There must have been something in the air that urged me on. I caught a glimpse in the distance of the young man ... oh! it was terrible to see! ... kneeling before his Laurette and kissing her knees and her feet. Do you not think I was very unhappy?
I called out like a madman! “Separate them ... we are all rascals! Separate them.... The poor Republic is a dead body! The Directors, the Directory, are its vermin! I shall leave the sea! I’m not afraid of all your lawyers; let them be told what I say, what does it matter to me?” Ah! much I cared for them, indeed! I should have liked to get hold of them, I should have had all five of them shot, the rascals! Oh! I would have done it; I cared as much for life as for the rain falling yonder, there.... Much I cared for it! ... a life like mine.... Ah! yes, indeed, a poor life ... truly!” ...
And the major’s voice died away little by little and became as uncertain as his words; and he walked on, biting his lips and frowning in a wild and fierce abstraction. He gave little convulsive movements, and struck his mule with his scabbard, as if he wanted to kill it. What astonished me, was to see the yellow skin of his face turn a dark red. He unfastened and violently tore open his coat at his chest, baring it to the wind and rain. Thus we continued our march in deep silence. I saw clearly that he would not speak any more of his own accord, and that I must bring myself to question him.
“I quite understand,” I said, as if he had finished his story, “that, after so cruel an experience, one conceives a horror for one’s calling.”
“Oh! calling; are you mad?” he said sharply, “it isn’t the calling! Never will the captain of a vessel be forced to turn executioner, unless when there come governments of murderers and thieves, who take advantage of a poor man’s habit of obeying blindly, obeying always, obeying like a wretched machine, in spite of his heart.”
At the same time he drew from his pocket a red handkerchief, into which he began to cry like a child. I stopped a minute as if to arrange my stirrup, and, staying behind the cart, I walked after it for some time, feeling that he would be humiliated if I saw too plainly his copious tears.
I had guessed rightly, for after about a quarter of an hour he also came behind his poor conveyance, and asked me if I had any razors in my portmanteau; to which I merely answered that, not yet having any beard, they were of no use to me. But he did not mind, it was so that he could speak of something else. I noticed with pleasure, however that he was coming back to his story, for he said to me suddenly:
“You’ve never seen any ships in your life, have you?”
“I have only seen them,” I said, “at the Panorama in Paris, and I have not much confidence in the naval knowledge I gathered there.”
“You don’t know, then, what the cat-head is?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
“It is a kind of terrace of beams projecting from the bows of the ship, and from which they throw the anchor into the sea. When a man is shot, he is generally placed there,” he added in a lower voice.
“Ah! I understand, because from there he falls into the sea.”
He did not answer, and began to describe all the kinds of boat that a brig can carry, and their place in the vessel; and then, without any order in his ideas, he continued his story with that affected air of carelessness which always results from long service, because a man must show his inferiors his contempt of danger, contempt of men, contempt of life, contempt of death, and contempt of himself; and all this nearly always hides, under a hard exterior, a profound sensibility.—The hardness of the man of war is like an iron mask over a noble face, like a stone dungeon that shuts in a royal prisoner.
“These craft hold six men,” he went on. “They jumped in and took Laura with them, before she had time to cry out or speak. Oh! that’s a thing for which no honest man can console himself when he is the cause of it. It is no use saying so, such a thing cannot be forgotten!... Ah! what weather it is!—What devil urged me to talk about this! When I’m telling it, I never can stop, it has to be finished. It’s a story that intoxicates me like Jurançon wine.—Ah! what weather it is!—My cloak is wet through!
“I was still telling you, I think, about that little Laurette!—Poor woman!—What clumsy people there are in the world! The officer was so stupid as to take the boat ahead of the brig. After that, it is true to say that one cannot foresee everything. I was counting on the night to hide the deed, and didn’t think of the light from twelve guns being fired at once. And, on my life! from the boat she saw her husband fall into the sea, shot dead.
“If there is a God up yonder, he knows how that happened that I’m going to tell you; I don’t know, but it was seen and heard as I see and hear you. At the instant when they fired, she put her hand to her head as if a bullet had struck her brow, and sat still in the boat without fainting, without crying out, without speaking, and came back to the brig when and how they wished. I went to her and talked to her for a long time as well as I could. She seemed to be listening to me and looked me in the face, rubbing her brow. She did not understand, and her brow was red and her face quite pale. She was trembling in every limb as if she was afraid of everybody. That has remained with her. She is still the same, poor little thing! an idiot, or as it were imbecile, or mad, whatever you please. Never has any one got a word out of her, except when she asks for some one to take away what is in her head.
“From that time I became as sad as she, and I felt something within me saying to me: ‛Stay with her to the end of your life, and take care of her’; I have done it. When I returned to France, I asked to be transferred with my rank into the land-troops, having taken a hatred of the sea, because into it I had spilled innocent blood. I sought out Laura’s family. Her mother was dead. Her sisters, to whom I took her mad, didn’t want her, and offered to send her to Charenton. I turned my back on them, and I kept her with me.
“Ah! merciful heavens! if you want to see her, comrade, it rests with you.” “Can it be she inside?” I asked. “Certainly! here! wait. Whoa! mule....”
III
HOW I CONTINUED MY JOURNEY
And he stopped his poor mule, which seemed delighted that I had asked the question. At the same time he lifted the oilcloth from his little cart, as if to arrange the straw which almost filled it, and I saw something very sad. I saw two blue eyes, extraordinarily large, admirably shaped, starting from a head pale, thin and long, and overflowing with quite straight fair hair. I saw nothing, in truth, but those two eyes, for the rest was dead. Her brow was red; her hollow white cheeks were bluish at the cheek-bones; she was cowering in the midst of the straw, so much so that you scarcely saw projecting from it her knees, on which she was playing dominoes all by herself. She looked at us for a minute, trembled a long time, smiled at me a little, and went on playing. It seemed to me that she was labouring to perceive how her right hand would beat her left. “You see, she has been playing that game for a month,” the major said to me; “to-morrow, perhaps it will be another game that will last a long time. It’s strange, eh?”
At the same time he began to replace on his shako the oilcloth, which the rain had slightly disarranged.
“Poor Laurette!” I said, “you have lost, and for ever, truly!”
I brought my horse near the cart, and held out my hand to her; she gave me hers mechanically, smiling with great sweetness. I noticed with surprise that she wore on her long fingers two diamond rings; I thought that here were her mother’s rings still, and wondered how poverty had left them there. I would not have remarked as much to the old commandant for all the world; but, as he followed me with his eyes, and saw mine fixed on Laura’s fingers, he said to me with a certain air of pride:
“They are pretty big diamonds, aren’t they? They might fetch a price on occasion, but I did not want her to part from them, poor child. When they are touched, she cries, she is never without them. Otherwise, she never complains, and she can sew now and then. I have kept my word to her poor little husband, and, in truth, I don’t regret it. I have never left her, and I have said everywhere that she is my mad daughter. People have respected that. In the army everything gets arranged better than they would think at Paris, eh!—She has been through all the Emperor’s wars with me, and I have always got her through safe and sound. I have always kept her comfortable. With straw and a little carriage, it’s never impossible. Her dress was pretty well cared for, and I, being a major, with good pay, my Legion of Honour pension, and the monthly napoleon, whose value was double, formerly, I was quite able to keep things going, and she did not embarrass me. On the contrary, the officers of the 7th Light Horse would sometimes laugh at her child’s play.”
Then he went near, and tapped her on the shoulder, as he would have done to his little mule.
“Well, my girl! come now, say something to the lieutenant there: come, just a nod.”
She went on with her dominoes.
“Oh!” he said, “she is a little shy to-day, because it is raining. Yet she never catches cold. These mad people are never ill, it’s convenient in that way. At the Beresina and all through the retreat from Moscow, she went bareheaded.—There, my girl, go on playing, come, don’t worry about us; there, do as you please, Laurette.”
She took the hand that he rested on her shoulder, a great black and wrinkled hand; she lifted it timidly to her lips and kissed it like a poor slave. My heart was wrung by that kiss, and I turned my horse back violently.
“Shall we continue our march, commandant?” I said; “it will be night before we reach Béthune.”
The commandant carefully scraped off with the end of his sword the yellow mud that covered his boots; then he got up on the footboard of the cart, and pulled over Laura’s head the cloth hood of a little cloak she was wearing. He took off his black silk scarf and put it round his adopted daughter’s neck; after which he gave the mule a kick, jerked his shoulder, and said: “Off you go, you’re a poor lot!” and we set off again.
The rain was still falling dismally; the grey sky and the grey earth stretched out endlessly; a kind of wan light, a pale wet sun, was sinking behind great mills that were not turning. We relapsed into profound silence.
I was looking at my old commandant; he was walking in great strides, with energy still maintained, while his mule was exhausted, and even my horse was beginning to hang his head. This worthy man from time to time took on his shako to wipe his bald forehead and his few grey hairs, or his thick eyebrows, or his white moustache, from which the rain was dripping. He did not worry about the effect which his narrative might have had on me. He had not made himself out either better or worse than he was. He had not stooped to show himself to advantage. He was not thinking of himself, and, after a quarter of an hour, he began, in the same manner, a very much longer story about a campaign of Marshal Massena’s, where he had formed his company into a square against some cavalry or other. I did not listen to him, although he grew warm in demonstrating to me the superiority of the foot-soldier over the mounted man.
Night fell, we were not going fast. The mud was becoming thicker and deeper. Nothing on the road and nothing at the end. We stopped at the foot of a dead tree, the only tree in our path. He first attended to his mule, as I did to my horse. Then he looked into the cart, as a mother does into her child’s cradle. I heard him saying: “Come, my girl, spread this coat over your feet, and try to sleep.—Come, that’s right! She hasn’t got a drop of rain on her.—Oh! confound it! she has broken my watch that I left round her neck!—Oh! my poor silver watch!—There, it’s no matter; try to sleep, child. The fine weather will come soon.—It’s strange! she is always feverish; mad people are like that. Look, here’s some chocolate for you, child.”
He propped the cart against the tree, and we sat down under the wheels, sheltered from the incessant shower, sharing a loaf he had and one I had: a poor supper.
“I am sorry we have nothing but this,” he said; “but it’s better than horseflesh cooked under the ashes with gunpowder on top, by way of salt, as we used to eat it in Russia. As for the poor little woman, I am bound to give her the best I have. You see that I always keep her by herself. She cannot bear to be near a man since the affair of the letter. I am old, and she seems to believe that I am her father; in spite of that, she would strangle me if I tried merely to kiss her on the forehead. Education always leaves them something, it seems, for I have never seen her forget to hide herself like a nun.—That’s strange, eh?”
As he was talking of her like this, we heard her sigh and say: “Take away the lead! take away the lead!” I got up, he made me sit down again.
“Sit still, sit still,” he said to me, “it is nothing. She has always said that, because she always thinks she can feel a bullet in her head. That doesn’t prevent her doing whatever she is told, and that with great amiability.”
I was silent and listened to him sadly. I began to calculate that from 1797 to 1815, which we had reached, eighteen years had passed thus for this man.—For a long time I stayed beside him in silence, trying to account to myself for such a character and such a fate. Then, for no apparent reason, I gave him a very enthusiastic handshake. He was astonished at it.
“You are a noble man!” I said to him. He answered:
“Eh! why that? Is it because of that poor woman?... You know well, my lad, that it was a duty. I have long learnt to sacrifice self.”
And he talked to me about Massena again.
The next day, at dawn, we reached Béthune, an ugly little fortified town, where you would say that the ramparts, contracting their circle, had squeezed the houses one on top of another. Everything there was in confusion; there had just been an alarm. The inhabitants were beginning to draw in the white flags from the windows; and to sew the tricolours together in their houses. The drums were beating the call to arms; the trumpets were sounding “to horse,” by order of the Duke of Berry. The long Picardy carts were carrying the Swiss Hundred and their baggage; the cannon of the Body-guard hastening to the ramparts, the princes’ carriages, the squadrons of the Red Companies falling in, were blocking up the town. The sight of the Royal Dragoons and the Musketeers made me forget my old travelling companion. I joined my company, and in the crowd I lost the little cart and its poor occupants. To my great regret, it was for ever that I lost them.
It was the first time in my life that I read the inmost depths of a real soldier’s heart. This meeting revealed to me a kind of human nature unknown to me, and which the country knows little and does not treat well; I placed it thenceforward very high in my esteem. I have often since then sought around me some man like that one, capable of that complete and unheeding self-sacrifice. Now, during the fourteen years that I have lived in the army, it is in it alone, and above all in the poor and despised ranks of the infantry, that I have met these men of antique mould, carrying the sentiment of duty to its final consequences, feeling neither remorse for having obeyed nor shame for being poor, simple in customs and in speech, proud of their country’s glory and heedless of their own, gladly shutting themselves up in their obscurity, and sharing with the unfortunate the black bread which they pay for with their blood.
I was long ignorant of what had become of this poor major, especially as he had not told me his name and I had not asked it. One day, however, at the coffee-house, in 1825, I think, an old infantry captain of the line to whom I described him, whilst waiting for parade, said to me:
“Oh! by heaven, my dear fellow, I knew him, poor devil! He was a fine man; he was ‛put down’ by a bullet at Waterloo. He had, indeed, left with the baggage a kind of mad girl whom we took to the hospital at Amiens, as we were on our way to join the army of the Loire, and who died there, raving, three days later.”
“I can well believe it,” I said to him; “she had lost her foster-father!”
“Oh pooh! father! what is that you say?” he rejoined in a tone which he meant to be sly and suggestive.
“I say that the call to arms is being sounded,” I replied, going out. And I too exercised self-restraint.
THE VENUS OF ILLE
PROSPER MÉRIMÉE
“Ιλεως, ἦν δ’ ἐγὼ, ἔοτω ὁ ἀνδριὰς καὶ ἢπιος οὔτως ἀνδρεῖος ὤν.”
Lucian, Philopseudes.
I was descending the last declivity of the Canigou, and, although the sun was already set, I could distinguish in the plain the houses of the little town of Ille, towards which I was making.
“Of course,” I said to the Catalan who had served me as guide since the previous evening, “of course you know where M. de Peyrehorade stays?”
“Know where he stays!” he exclaimed; “I know his house as well as my own; and, if it were not so dark, I would show it you. It is the finest in Ille. He has money, he has, M. de Peyrehorade, and he’s marrying his son to richer than himself even.”
“And is this marriage to be soon?” I asked him.
“Soon! perhaps the fiddles are ordered for the wedding already. To-night, perhaps, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, for all that I know! It’s to be at Puygarrig; for it’s Mademoiselle de Puygarrig whom the young gentleman is marrying. It will be grand, that it will!”
I had an introduction from my friend, M. de P., to M. de Peyrehorade. He, I had been informed, was a very learned antiquary, and most exceedingly obliging. He would consider it a pleasure to show me all the ruins for ten leagues around. Now, I was counting on his aid to visit the environs of Ille, which I knew to be rich in monuments of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. This marriage, of which I now heard for the first time, upset all my plans.
“I am going to be a spoil-sport,” I said to myself. But I was expected; seeing that M. de P. had said I was coming, I was bound to present myself.
“I’ll bet you, sir,” my guide said to me, when we were now in the plain, “I’ll bet you a cigar that I guess what you are going to do at M. de Peyrehorade’s.”
“O!” I said to him, as I handed him a cigar, “that’s not very difficult to guess! At this hour of night, after doing six leagues on the Canigou, the great thing is supper.”
“Yes, but to-morrow?... Listen, I’ll wager you’ve come to Ille to see the idol. I guessed as much from seeing you take the portraits of the saints at Serrabona.”
“The idol! What idol?” The word excited my curiosity.
“What! Did they not tell you at Perpignan, how M. de Peyrehorade had found an idol in the ground?”
“A statue in terra cotta or earthenware, do you mean?”
“No, no, in real copper, enough to make a lot of pennies with. It weighs as much as a church-bell. It was away down in the ground, at the foot of an olive-tree, that we got it.”
“Then you were present at the discovery?”
“Yes, sir. M. de Peyrehorade told us a fortnight ago, Jean Coll and me, to root up an old olive-tree that was frosted last year, for it was a very bad one, as you know. Well then, as we were busy, Jean Coll, who was going at it with all his might, gave a blow with his pick, and I hear Boom ..., as if he had struck on a bell. ‘What’s that?’ says I. We pick, and we pick, and, look! there appears a black hand, which looked like the hand of a corpse rising out of the ground. I did get a fright. I go off to the master, and I says to him, ‛Corpses, master, under the olive-tree! Must call the parson,’ ‛What corpses?’ says he to me. He comes, and has no sooner seen the hand than he cries out, ‛An antique! An antique!’ You would have thought he had found a treasure. And there he was, with the pick, with his hands, fussing away and doing as much work as the two of us, with his way of it.”
“And after all, what did you find?”
“A great black woman, more than half naked, saving your Honour’s presence, all in copper, and M. de Peyrehorade told us that it was an idol of the time of the heathens ... of the time of Charlemagne, no less!”
“I see what it is.... Just a Virgin in bronze from some convent that has been destroyed.”
“Just a Virgin! Very much so!... I’d easily have recognized it, if it had been just a Virgin. It’s an idol, I tell you; that’s well seen from her look. She fixes you with her great, white eyes.... You’d think she was staring at you. You have to cast down your eyes, you have, if you look at her.”
“White eyes, do you say? No doubt they are inlaid on the bronze. Perhaps it will be some Roman statue.”
“Roman! that’s it. M. de Peyrehorade said that she’s a Roman. Ah! I can see you’re a scholar like himself.”
“Is she complete, in good preservation?”
“Yes, sir. She wants nothing. She’s even finer and better finished than the bust of Louis-Philippe at the Town-house in painted plaster. But, for all that, I don’t like the idol’s face. She looks wicked ... and she is wicked.”
“Wicked! What wickedness has she done to you?”
“Not to me exactly; but you’ll see. We were breaking our backs to make her stand upright, even M. de Peyrehorade, who was also pulling at the rope, though he has not much more strength than a chicken, honest man! After a good deal of trouble we get her straight. I was picking up a piece of tile to prop her, when, crash! there she falls in a heap on her back. I shouted, ‛Look out below, there!’ But not quick enough, though, for Jean Coll had not time to pull away his leg.”
“And was he hurt?”
“Broken as clean as a pipe-shank, his poor leg! Zounds, when I saw that, my, I was furious! I wanted to put my pick through the idol, but M. de Peyrehorade prevented me. He gave money to Jean Coll, but for all that he has been in bed a fortnight since it happened to him, and the doctor says that he’ll never walk as well with that leg as with the other. It’s a pity for him, for he was our best runner and, next to the young gentleman, our trickiest tennis-player. M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade was sorry about it, for it was Coll he used to play with. My word, it was good to see how they returned the balls. Paf! Paf! They never once touched the ground.”
Talking thus, we entered Ille, and soon I found myself in presence of M. de Peyrehorade. He was a little old man, still fresh and lively, powdered, red-nosed, with a jovial and roguish air. Before opening M. de P.’s letter, he had installed me in front of a well-spread table, and had presented me to his wife and son as an illustrious archæologist, who was to rescue Roussillon from the oblivion in which it had been left by the indifference of savants.
All the time that I was eating with a good appetite—for nothing makes one so sharp-set as the keen air of the mountains—I was examining my hosts. I have said something about M. de Peyrehorade; I ought to add that he was vivacity itself. He talked, ate, got up, ran to his library, brought me books, showed me prints, filled my glass; he was never two minutes at rest. His wife, a little too stout, like most Catalan women when they are over forty, struck me as a double-dyed provincial, occupied solely with the cares of her household. Although the supper was enough for six persons at least, she ran to the kitchen, made them kill pigeons and fry miliasses, and opened I don’t know how many pots of preserves. In an instant the table was crowded with dishes and bottles, and I should assuredly have died of indigestion, if I had even tasted everything that they offered me. Nevertheless, at each dish that I refused, there were fresh excuses. They were afraid I should find myself very uncomfortable at Ille. In the country there are so few resources, and Parisians are so hard to please!
Amid all his parents’ comings and goings, M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade budged no more than a gate-post. He was a tall young man of six-and-twenty, with a countenance handsome and regular, but lacking in expression. His build and his athletic proportions quite justified the reputation of an indefatigable tennis-player which he had acquired in the district. He was dressed that evening with elegance, exactly after the plate in the latest number of the Journal des Modes. But he seemed to me to be ill at ease in his habiliments; he was as stiff as a poker in his velvet stock, and could only turn all in a piece. His large, sunburnt hands and short nails contrasted singularly with his costume. They were the hands of a labourer sticking out of the cuffs of a dandy. Moreover, though he looked me up and down from head to foot most inquisitively in my quality of a Parisian, he never addressed me the whole evening, except once, to ask me where I had bought my watch-chain.
“Ah, well, my dear guest,” M. de Peyrehorade said to me as the supper was drawing to an end, “you belong to me, you are under my roof. I will not let you go, at least not until you have seen everything of interest that we have in our mountains. You must get acquainted with our Roussillon, and do justice to it. You have no idea of all that we are going to show you. Phœnician, Celtic, Roman, Arab, Byzantine antiquities, I’ll show you them all, from the cedar to the hyssop. I’ll take you everywhere, and won’t spare you a single brick.”
A fit of coughing forced him to stop. I took advantage of it to tell him that I should be most sorry to inconvenience him on an occasion so interesting to his family.
If he would have the kindness to give me his valuable advice as to the excursions which I ought to make, I should be able, without his taking the trouble of accompanying me, to....
“Ah, you mean the marriage of that boy there!” he shouted, and interrupted me. “Fiddlesticks! that will be over by the day after to-morrow. You’ll celebrate the wedding along with us, a family affair, for the bride is in mourning for an aunt, whose heiress she is. So no party, no dance.... It’s a pity ... you would have seen our Catalan girls dancing.... They are pretty, and perhaps you’d have taken the fancy to imitate my Alphonse. One marriage, they say, leads to another.... By Saturday, after the young couple are married, I’ll be free, and we’ll set out. I must apologize to you for boring you with a country wedding. For a Parisian who is sated with gaieties ... and a wedding without a dance into the bargain! However, you’ll see a bride ... a bride ... you’ll tell me what you think about her.... But you’re a sober-sides and don’t look at women now. I’ve better than that to show you. I’ll let you see something!... I am keeping a fine surprise for you to-morrow.”
“Faith,” I said, “it is not easy to have a treasure in the house without the public knowing all about it. I think I can guess the surprise that you have in store for me. Yes, if it is your statue you mean, the description of it which my guide gave me has served only to excite my curiosity and to dispose me to admiration.”
“Ah! He has told you of the idol, for so they call my beautiful Venus Tur.... But I won’t tell you anything. To-morrow in daylight you shall see her, and you shall tell me if I am right in thinking her a masterpiece. Upon my word! you could not have arrived more opportunely! There are some inscriptions, which I, poor ignoramus, explain in my own way ... but a savant from Paris!... You will perhaps laugh at my interpretation ... for I have written a paper.... I who am speaking to you ... an old provincial antiquary, I have come out.... I mean to make the press groan.... If you will be so kind as read and correct me, I flatter myself.... For example, I am very curious to know how you will translate that inscription on the base: CAVE.... But I won’t ask you anything just now! To-morrow, to-morrow! Not a word about the Venus to-day!”
“You are just as well, Peyrehorade,” said his wife, “to let your idol alone. Can’t you see that you are preventing the gentleman from eating? Go away with you! The gentleman has seen plenty of finer statues than yours at Paris. At the Tuileries there are dozens of them, and in bronze, too.”
“There’s ignorance for you, the blessed ignorance of the provinces!” broke in M. de Peyrehorade. “To compare an admirable antique to Coustou’s vapid faces!
‛With great lack of reverence, truly,
Speaks my wife of gods divine!’
“Do you know, my wife wanted me to melt down my statue to make into a bell for our church? Because she would have been the donor. A masterpiece of Myron’s, my dear sir!”
“Masterpiece! Masterpiece! A pretty masterpiece she’s made, breaking a man’s leg!”
“Look here, wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade, in a firm tone, stretching out to her his right leg in a stocking of clouded silk, “if my Venus had broken that leg for me, I should not have regretted it.”
“Gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you say that? Fortunately the man’s getting better. But still I can’t bring myself to look at a statue which causes misfortunes like that. Poor Jean Coll!”
“Wounded by Venus, sir,” said M. de Peyrehorade with a great laugh, “wounded by Venus, the rascal complains:
‛Veneris nec præmia nôris.’
Who hasn’t been wounded by Venus?”
M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked an eye with a knowing air, and looked at me, as much as to ask, “D’ye understand, Mr. Parisian?”
The supper came to an end. For the last hour I had eaten nothing. I was tired, and I could not manage to hide the frequent yawns which escaped me. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice them, and remarked that it was time to go to bed. Thereupon began fresh apologies for the poor couch I was about to find. I should not be so comfortable as in Paris. Things are so uncomfortable in the provinces. I must excuse Roussillon people. It was in vain that I protested that after a journey in the mountains a truss of straw would be a delicious couch for me; they persisted in entreating me to pardon poor country folk, if they did not treat me so well as they could have desired. At last I went upstairs to the room which was meant for me, accompanied by M. de Peyrehorade. The stair, the upper steps of which were of wood, led to the middle of a corridor, on which several rooms opened.
“To the right,” said my host, “are the apartments which I intend for the future Madame Alphonse. Your room is at the end of the opposite corridor. You quite understand,” he added with an air which was meant to be sly, “you quite understand that newly married folk must be isolated. You are at one end of the house, they at the other.” We entered a well furnished room, where the first object on which I set eyes was a bed seven feet long, six wide, and so high that one required a stool to hoist oneself into it. My host, having shown me where the bell was, and having satisfied himself that the sugar-bowl was filled and the eau-de-Cologne bottles duly set on the dressing-table, after having asked me several times if I had everything I wanted, wished me good-night and left me to myself.
The windows were shut. Before undressing, I opened one to breathe the fresh night air, so delightful after a long supper. Before me lay the Canigou, which is wonderful to behold at any time, but which, that night, seemed to me the finest mountain in the world, lit up as it was by a resplendent moon. I remained some minutes contemplating the marvellous sky-line, and I was about to close my window when, looking down, I observed the statue on a pedestal some two-score yards from the house. It was placed at the corner of a quick-set hedge, which divided a little garden from a spacious square perfectly smooth, which, as I learned later, was the town tennis-court. This space, the property of M. de Peyrehorade, had been made over by him to the commune, at the pressing solicitations of his son.
At the distance where I was, it was difficult to make out the attitude of the statue; I could only judge of its height, which seemed to be about six feet. At that moment, two rascals from the town were passing by the tennis-court, pretty close to the hedge, whistling the pretty Roussillon air Montagnes régalades. They stopped to look at the statue; one of them even apostrophized it aloud. He spoke Catalan; but I had been in Roussillon long enough to be able to understand pretty well what he was saying.
“So you’re there, you hussy!” (The Catalan word was more forcible). “You’re there!” he said. “So it’s you who broke Jean Coll’s leg for him! If you belonged to me, I’d break your neck.”
“Bah! What would you break it with?” said the other. “She’s made of copper, so hard that Stephen broke his file on it trying to cut into it. It’s copper of heathen times; it’s harder than I don’t know what.”
“If I had my cold chisel,” (it seems that he was an apprentice locksmith), “I’d soon knock out her big white eyes, as easy as I’d take an almond out of its shell. There’s more than two half-crowns’ worth of silver in them.”
They went a step or two on their way.
“I must wish the idol good-night,” said the taller of the apprentices, stopping short.
He stooped down, and no doubt picked up a stone. I saw him straighten out his arm and throw something, and immediately a sonorous blow rang on the bronze. That same instant, the apprentice put his hand to his head and uttered a cry of pain.
“She’s thrown it back at me!” he exclaimed.
And my two rascals took to their heels. Evidently the stone had rebounded from the metal and had punished the joker for his outrage on the goddess.
I shut the window, laughing heartily.
“Another Vandal punished by Venus! Would that all the destroyers of our ancient monuments had their heads broken in the same way!”
With this charitable desire, I fell asleep.
It was broad daylight when I awoke. At one side of my bed stood M. de Peyrehorade in his dressing-gown; at the other a servant, sent by his wife, a cup of chocolate in his hand.
“Come! get up, Parisian! That’s just like you lazy people from the capital!” said my host, while I dressed myself hurriedly. “Eight o’clock, and still in bed! Why, I’ve been up since six o’clock! This is the third time I’ve been upstairs; I went to your door on tiptoe; no one, no sign of life. It is bad for you to sleep too much at your age. And my Venus, whom you have not seen yet! Come, quick and take this cup of Barcelona chocolate.... Real smuggled.... Chocolate such as you don’t have in Paris. Fortify yourself, for, once you are in the presence of my Venus, there will be no tearing you away from her.”
In five minutes I was ready, that is to say, half shaved, buttoned awry, and scalded by the chocolate that I had swallowed boiling hot. I went down to the garden, and found myself before an admirable statue.
It really was a Venus of marvellous beauty. The upper part of the body was nude, as the ancients usually represented the greater divinities; the right hand, raised level with the breast, was turned palm inwards, the thumb and first two fingers extended, the others slightly bent. The other hand, approaching her haunch, supported the drapery that covered the lower part of the body. The pose of the statue recalled that of the player at morra, which is designated, for some reason or other, by the name of Germanicus. Perhaps the intention was to represent the goddess as playing at morra.
Be that as it may, nothing more perfect could possibly be seen than the body of that Venus; nothing more suave, more voluptuous than its contours; nothing more elegant and more noble than its drapery. I had expected some work of the Lower Empire; I saw a masterpiece of the best period of sculpture. What struck me above all was the exquisite truth of the forms, so much so that one might have supposed them moulded from nature, if nature produced such perfect models.
The hair, piled above the forehead, seemed to have been gilded at one time. The head, small like that of almost all Greek statues, was slightly inclined forwards. As for the face, I shall never succeed in expressing its strange character, the type of which was not like that of any other antique statue that I can remember. It was not the calm and severe beauty of the Greek sculptors, who, on system, gave all the features a majestic immobility. Here, on the contrary, I observed with surprise the distinct intention of the artist to render mischievousness almost bordering on malice. All the features were slightly contracted: the eyes a little oblique, the mouth raised at the corners, the nostrils somewhat distended. Disdain, irony, cruelty were to be read on this visage, which was at the same time of an incredible beauty. In fact, the more one looked at that admirable statue, the more one experienced a feeling of pain that such marvellous beauty could be allied to utter absence of sensibility.
“If the model ever existed,” I said to M. de Peyrehorade—” and I doubt if Heaven ever produced such a woman—how I pity her lovers! She must have found pleasure in making them die of despair. There is something ferocious in her expression, and yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.”
“‛Tis Venus’ self a stooping o’er her prey!”
exclaimed M. de Peyrehorade, gratified at my enthusiasm.
The expression of infernal irony was augmented, perhaps, by the contrast between her eyes inlaid with silver, very brilliant, and the blackish-green patina which time had given to the whole statue. Those brilliant eyes produced a certain illusion, which recalled reality, life. I remembered what my guide had told me, that she made those who looked at her cast down their eyes. That was almost true, and I could not refrain from a gesture of anger against myself at feeling somewhat ill at ease before this figure of bronze.
“Now that you have admired everything in detail, my dear colleague in the antique,” said my host, “let us proceed, if you please, to a scientific discussion. What do you say about this inscription, to which you have not paid any attention as yet?”
He showed me the base of the statue, and there I read these words:
CAVE AMANTEM.
“Quid dicis, doctissime?” he asked me, rubbing his hands. “Let us see whether we shall agree on the meaning of this cave amantem!”
“Why,” I said, “there are two possible meanings. You can translate, ‛Beware of him who loves thee; distrust lovers.’ But, in this sense I do not know whether cave amantem would be good Latinity. Looking to the lady’s diabolical expression, I am more inclined to think that the artist meant to warn the beholder against this terrible beauty. So I would translate, ‛Beware for thyself, if she loves thee.’”
“Humph!” said M. de Peyrehorade. “Yes, that is an admissible rendering: but you will not be offended if I prefer the first translation, which, however, I shall develop. You know who the lover of Venus was, do you not?”
“There are several.”
“Yes; but the first is Vulcan. Was the meaning not intended to be ‛Despite all thy beauty, thy disdainful air, thou shalt have a blacksmith, an ugly lameter for lover?’ A profound moral, sir, for coquettes!”
I could not keep from smiling, the interpretation seemed so far-fetched.
“It’s a terrible language, Latin, with its conciseness,” I remarked, to avoid contradicting my antiquary explicitly, and I fell back a few paces in order to view the statue better.
“One moment, colleague!” said M. de Peyrehorade, taking me by the arm, “you haven’t seen all. There’s still another inscription. Get up on the base and look at the right arm.” So speaking, he helped me to get up.
I clung on without much ceremony by the neck of the Venus with whom I was beginning to be quite at home. I even looked at her for a moment “under the nose,” and found her more wicked and more beautiful than ever at close quarters. Then I saw that there were engraved on the arm some characters in ancient cursive character, as it seemed to me. With the help of spectacles I spelled out what follows, and meanwhile M. de Peyrehorade repeated each word as I pronounced it, signifying his approval by voice and gesture. Accordingly I read:
VENERI TVRBVL ...
EVTYCHES MYRO
IMPERIO FECIT
After the word TVRBVL in the first line it seemed to me that there were several letters effaced; but TVRBVL was perfectly legible.
“Which means?” my host asked me, beaming and smiling mischievously, for he was pretty sure that I would not get easily over that TVRBVL.
“There is one word which I can’t explain yet,” I told him, “but all the rest is easy: Eutyches Myron made this offering to Venus at her command.”
“Just so! But TVRBVL, what do you make of that? What is TVRBVL?”
“Tvrbvl bothers me considerably. I am hunting in vain for some known epithet of Venus which might help me. Let us see, what do you say to TVRBVLENTA? Venus who troubles, agitates?... You see that I am always possessed by her wicked expression. TVRBVLENTA, that is not at all a bad epithet for Venus,” I added in a modest tone, for I was not very well satisfied myself with my explanation.
“Venus the Turbulent! Venus the Rowdy! Ah! Then you believe that my Venus is a tavern Venus, do you? Not at all, sir; she is a well-bred Venus. But I’ll explain this TVRBVL ... to you. Though you must promise not to divulge my discovery before my paper is printed. Because, you see, I am proud of this find.... You might as well leave us poor devils of provincials some ears to glean. You are so rich, you learned gentlemen of Paris!”
From the top of the pedestal, where I was still perched, I solemnly promised him that I would never be so dishonourable as to rob him of his discovery.
“Tvrbvl ..., sir,” said he, coming nearer and lowering his voice, for fear any one besides me might hear him, “read TVRBVLNERAE.”
“I am still no wiser.”
“Listen! A league from here, at the foot of the mountain, there is a village called Boulternère. That is a corruption of the Latin word TVRBVLNERA. Nothing more common than these inversions. Boulternère, sir, was a Roman town. I always suspected so, but I never had evidence for it. The evidence is here! This Venus was the local deity of the city of Boulternère; and this word Boulternère, of which I have just demonstrated the ancient origin, proves a thing more curious still, namely, that Boulternère, before being a Roman town, was a town of the Phœnicians!”
He paused for a moment to take breath and enjoy my surprise. I managed to repress a strong desire to laugh.
“In fact,” he continued, “TVRBVLNERA is pure Phœnician; TVR, pronounce TOOR.... Toor and SOOR, the same word, are they not? Sur is the Phœnician name of Tyre; I need not remind you of its meaning. Bvl is Baal; Bâl, Bel, Bul, slight difference of pronunciation. As for NERA, that gives me a little trouble. I am inclined to think, failing a Phœnician word, that it comes from the Greek νηρός, moist, marshy. The word would then be a hybrid. To justify νηρός, I’ll show you at Boulternère how the streams from the mountains form pestilential marshes there. On the other hand, the termination NERA might have been added much later in honour of Nera Pivesuvia, wife of Tetricus, who may have rendered some benefit to the city of Turbul. But, looking to the marshes, I prefer the derivation from νηρός.”
He took a pinch of snuff with a satisfied air.
“But let us leave the Phœnicians and return to the inscription. I translate, then, ‛To Venus of Boulternère Myron dedicates at her command this statue, his work.’”
I took good care not to criticize his etymology; but I wished in my turn to give evidence of penetration, and said to him:
“Stop a moment, sir, Myron consecrated something; but I do not at all see that it was this statue.”
“How so?” he exclaimed. “Was not Myron a famous Greek sculptor? His talent must have been perpetuated in his family: it must have been one of his descendants who made this statue. Nothing is more certain.”
“But,” I replied, “I see a little hole in the arm. In my opinion, it served to fasten something, a bracelet, for instance, which this Myron gave to Venus as an expiatory offering. Myron was an unhappy lover. Venus was angry with him; he appeased her by consecrating a golden bracelet to her. Note that fecit is very often used for consecravit. They are synonymous terms. I could show you more than one example, if I had Gruter, or even Orellius at hand. It is natural that a lover should see Venus in a dream, that he should imagine that she commands him to give a golden bracelet to her statue. Myron consecrated a bracelet to her.... Then the barbarians, or even some sacrilegious robber....”
“Ah, it is easy to see that you have written novels!” exclaimed my host, as he lent me a hand to descend. “No, sir; it is a work of the school of Myron. Only look at the workmanship, and you’ll agree.”
Having made it an invariable rule never to give a point-blank contradiction to obstinate antiquaries, I bowed my head with an air of conviction and said:
“It is an admirable piece.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed M. de Peyrehorade. “Another piece of vandalism! Some one must have been throwing stones at my statue!”
He had just observed a white mark a little above the breast of the Venus. I noticed a similar trace on the fingers of the right hand, which, I supposed at the time, the stone had touched in its passage, or perhaps even a fragment had been knocked off it by the shock, and had rebounded on to the hand. I related to my host the insult, of which I had been a witness, and the prompt punishment which had followed it. He laughed heartily at the story, and, comparing the appprentice to Diomede, wished that, like the Greek hero, he might see all his companions turned into white birds.
The breakfast bell interrupted this classical conversation, and, as on the previous evening, I was obliged to eat enough for four. Then M. de Peyrehorade’s farmers came; and, while he gave audience to them, his son took me to see a barouche which he had bought at Toulouse for his bride, and which I, of course, admired. Next I went into the stable with him, where he kept me for half an hour boasting about his horses, telling me their pedigrees, and detailing the prizes that they had won at the county races. At last he came to tell me about his future wife, having been led up to her by a grey mare which he intended for her.
“We’ll see her to-day,” he said. “I don’t know whether you’ll think her pretty. You are difficult to please at Paris; but every one here and at Perpignan thinks her charming. The beauty of it is that she is very rich. Her aunt at Prades has left her property to her. Oh, I’ll be very happy.”
I was deeply disgusted to see a young man apparently more impressed by the dowry than by the charms of his future wife.
“You know something about jewels,” continued M. Alphonse, “what do you think of this? This is the ring which I’m to give her to-morrow.”
With these words he drew from the first joint of his little finger a big ring enriched with diamonds, in the form of two clasped hands; an allusion which struck me as infinitely poetical. The workmanship was ancient, but I thought that it had been remodelled to set the diamonds. Inside the ring, in Gothic letters, could be read the words, “Sempr’ ab ti,” that is to say, “Ever with thee.”
“It is a pretty ring,” I said; “but those diamonds that have been added have made it lose something of its character.”
“Oh, it is very much prettier like that,” he said with a smile. “There are twelve hundred francs worth of diamonds there. It was given to me by my mother. It was a very ancient family ring ... from the times of chivalry. My grandmother used it for her wedding-ring, and she got it from her grandmother. Goodness knows when it was made.”
“The custom at Paris,” I told him, “is to give quite a simple ring, usually composed of two different metals, such as gold and platinum. Wait! that other ring, the one on that finger, would be very suitable. This one, with its diamonds and its hands in relief, is so big that one could never put on a glove over it.”
“Oh, Madame Alphonse will manage as she likes. I expect she’ll be quite glad to have it in any case. Twelve thousand francs is a nice thing to have on one’s finger. That little ring there,” he added, with a complacent glance at the perfectly plain ring which he wore on his hand, “that ring there was given me by a girl at Paris one Shrove Tuesday. Ah, how I went the pace when I was at Paris two years ago! That’s the place to enjoy oneself!...” And he heaved a sigh of regret.
We were to dine that day at Puygarrig, with the bride’s parents; we got into a barouche and drove to the château, which was about a league and a half distant from Ille. I was presented and received as the friend of the family. I shall say nothing about the dinner or the conversation which ensued, and in which I took little part. M. Alphonse, placed beside his betrothed, said something in her ear every quarter of an hour. For her part, she did not often raise her eyes, and, when her intended spoke to her, she blushed modestly, but answered him without embarrassment.
Mademoiselle de Puygarrig was eighteen years of age; her supple and delicate figure was a contrast to the large-boned frame of her robust bridegroom. She was not merely beautiful, but entrancing. I admired the perfect naturalness of all her answers; and her air of kindness, which yet was not without a slight tinge of mischief, reminded me involuntarily of my host’s Venus. As I made this comparison mentally, I asked myself whether the superiority in point of beauty, which was undoubtedly to be awarded to the statue, was not due, in great part, to its tigress-like expression; for energy, even that of evil passions, always excites us to astonishment and a sort of involuntary admiration.
“What a pity,” said I to myself, as we left Puygarrig, “that so amiable a creature should be rich, and her portion should attract the suit of a man so unworthy of her!” On the way back to Ille, being at a loss for something to say to Madame de Peyrehorade, whom I thought it good manners to address occasionally, I exclaimed:
“You are great freethinkers in Roussillon! Why, Madame, you are holding a marriage on a Friday! At Paris we are more superstitious; nobody there would dare to take a wife on such a day.”
“For goodness’ sake don’t talk about that to me!” she said. “If it had depended on me alone, we should certainly have chosen another day. But Peyrehorade would have it, and we had to give in to him. I am anxious about it all the same. What if anything happens? There must be some reason for it, for else why is everybody afraid of Friday?”
“Friday!” cried her husband, “that’s Venus’s day! A good day for a marriage! You see, my dear colleague, I can never get away from my Venus. On my honour, it’s because of her that I chose Friday! To-morrow, if you like, before the wedding, we’ll make a little sacrifice to her; we’ll sacrifice two doves, and if I knew where to get some incense....”
“For shame, Peyrehorade!” broke in his wife, scandalized beyond endurance. “Burn incense to an idol! That would be an abomination! Whatever would they say about us in the district?”
“At least,” said M. de Peyrehorade, “you will allow me to place a wreath of roses and lilies on her head:
Manibus date lilia plenis.
You see, sir, the Charter is an empty word. We have not liberty of worship!”
The arrangements for the morrow were settled as follows. Everybody was to be dressed and ready at ten o’clock sharp. After chocolate, we were to drive to Puygarrig. The civil marriage was to take place at the mayor’s office in the village, and the religious ceremony in the chapel at the château. Next was to come a breakfast. After the breakfast we were to pass the time as best we could until seven o’clock. At seven we were to return to Ille, to M. de Peyrehorade’s, where the united families were to sup. The rest followed naturally. As they could not dance, they meant to eat as much as possible.
By eight o’clock I was seated before the Venus, pencil in hand, beginning the head of the statue over again for the twentieth time without being able to catch its expression. M. de Peyrehorade kept coming and going about me, giving me his advice and repeating his Phœnician etymologies; then he disposed some Bengal roses on the pedestal of the statue, and in a tragi-comic voice addressed to it his prayers for the couple who were about to live under his roof. About nine o’clock he went in to dress, and at the same moment M. Alphonse made his appearance, very tight in a new coat, with white gloves, patent-leather boots, chased studs, a rose in his button-hole.
“You will draw my wife’s portrait?” he asked, bending over my sketch. “She is pretty too.”
At that moment, on the tennis-court which I have mentioned, a match began, which at once attracted M. Alphonse’s attention. I too, tired and in despair of rendering that diabolical face, soon quitted my sketch to watch the players. Among them were some Spanish muleteers who had arrived the night before. They were Aragonese and Navarrese, almost all of marvellous skill. Accordingly the Ille men, though encouraged by the presence and advice of M. Alphonse, were pretty promptly beaten by these new champions. The local spectators were in consternation. M. Alphonse looked at his watch. It was only half-past nine yet. His mother had not got her hair dressed. He hesitated no longer; he took off his coat, asked for a jacket, and challenged the Spaniards. When I saw him do so, I smiled and was rather surprised.
“We must keep up the honour of the country,” he said. I found him really handsome then. He was aroused. His dress, which had occupied him so much a little ago, was nothing more to him now. A few minutes before, he had been afraid to turn his head for fear of deranging his neck-tie. Now he had no more thought of his curled hair or his neatly pleated ruffle. And his bride?... Really, had it been necessary, I believe he would have had the marriage postponed. I saw him hastily slip on a pair of sandals, turn up his sleeves, and, with a confident air, place himself at the head of the defeated side, like Cæsar rallying his soldiers at Dyrrachium. I leaped over the hedge and stationed myself comfortably under the shade of a celiis australis, so that I had a good view of the two camps.
Contrary to general expectation, M. Alphonse missed the first ball; true it came skimming low down and delivered with surprising force by an Aragonese, who appeared to be the leader of the Spaniards.
He was a man about forty years of age, hard and wiry, about six feet tall, and his olive skin was almost as dark in tone as the bronze of the Venus.
M. Alphonse threw his racket on the ground in a rage.
“It’s this confounded ring,” he cried, “which pinched my finger, and made me miss a safe ball!”
He took off the diamond ring, not without difficulty; I went to take it from him; but he was too quick for me and ran to the Venus, put the ring on its ring-finger, and resumed his place at the head of the Ille men.
He was pale, but calm and resolute. Thenceforth he did not make a single mistake, and the Spaniards were thoroughly beaten. It was a fine sight to see the enthusiasm of the on-lookers: some uttered a thousand cries of joy and threw their bonnets in the air; others pressed his hands, calling him the honour of their country. If he had repelled an invasion, I doubt whether he would have received more lively or more sincere congratulations. The disappointment of the losers added still more to the brilliance of his victory.
“We’ll have other matches, my good fellow,” he said to the Aragonese with a tone of superiority; “but I’ll give you a handicap.”
I could have wished that M. Alphonse had been more modest, and I was almost pained at the humiliation of his rival.
The Spanish giant felt the insult keenly. I saw him turn pale under his sunburnt skin. He looked at his racket gloomily and set his teeth; then, in a choked voice, he said almost inaudibly, “Me lo pagarás.”
M. de Peyrehorade’s voice disturbed his son’s triumph; my host, much surprised not to find him presiding over the harnessing of the new barouche, was still more surprised to see him all in a sweat, racket in hand. M. Alphonse ran to the house, washed his hands and face, put his new coat and patent-leather shoes on again, and five minutes later we were off at a brisk trot on the way to Puygarrig. All the tennis-players of the town and a great number of on-lookers followed us with cries of joy. The strong horses which drew us had difficulty in keeping ahead of those intrepid Catalans.
We were at Puygarrig, and the procession was about to set out for the mayor’s office, when M. Alphonse struck his forehead, and said to me in an undertone:
“How stupid of me! I’ve forgotten the ring! It’s on the finger of the Venus, the Devil take her! What ever you do, don’t mention it to my mother. Perhaps she’ll not notice anything.”
“You could send somebody,” I said.
“Bah! My man is staying behind at Ille. And those fellows here, I don’t much trust them. Twelve hundred francs worth of diamonds! That would be a temptation to a good many of them. Besides, what would they think here of my absent-mindedness? They’d make fine fun of me. They’d call me the statue’s husband.... I just hope nobody steals it from me! Fortunately the idol has put a fear on my rogues. They don’t dare go within arm’s length of it. Bah! It doesn’t matter; I’ve got another ring.” The two ceremonies, civil and religious, were performed with due pomp; and Mademoiselle de Puygarrig received a little Paris dress-maker’s ring, never suspecting that her bridegroom was making the sacrifice of a love-token to her. Then we sat down to table, where we drank, ate, even sang, all at great length. I felt for the bride in the coarse merriment which was resounding about her; still, she kept a better countenance than I had expected, and her embarrassment had nothing either of awkwardness or affectation about it.
Perhaps courage comes with difficult situations.
The breakfast having terminated when it pleased Heaven, it was four o’clock; the men went to walk in the park, which was magnificent, or to watch the Puygarrig peasant-girls dancing on the château lawn arrayed in their holiday clothes. In this way we spent some hours. Meanwhile the women were very busy with the bride, who was making them admire her wedding-presents. Then she changed her dress, and I noticed that she covered up her fine hair with a cap and a feathered hat, for women are in a great hurry until they have assumed as soon as possible the ornaments which custom forbids them to wear as long as they are unmarried.
It was almost eight o’clock when they set about starting for Ille. But first there was a pathetic scene. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig’s aunt, who had been a mother to her, a very aged and very devout woman, was not to go to town with us. At her niece’s going away she made a touching address to her on the duties of a wife, a discourse which resulted in a torrent of tears and never-ending embraces. M. de Peyrehorade compared this parting to the Rape of the Sabines. We set out, however, and on the way we all did our utmost to distract the bride and make her laugh; but in vain.
At Ille supper was waiting us, and what a supper! If I had been disgusted at the coarse merriment of the morning, I was still more so at the equivocations and pleasantries of which the bridegroom and, above all, the bride were the objects. The bridegroom, who had disappeared for an instant before sitting down to table, was pale and icily serious. Every other minute he took a draught of old Collioure wine, almost as strong as brandy. I was beside him, and I felt obliged to warn him:
“Take care! They say that wine....”
I told him some nonsense or other to put myself on a level with the other guests.
He nudged me with his knee and, in an undertone, said to me:
“When we rise from table ..., let me have a word with you.”
His grave tone surprised me. I looked more attentively at him, and I noticed the strange alteration in his features.
“Do you feel unwell?” I asked him.
“No.”
And he fell to drinking again.
Meanwhile, amid shouts and clapping of hands, a child of eleven, who had slipped under the table, showed the company a pretty white and pink ribbon which he had just unfastened from the bride’s ankle. That was called her garter. It was at once cut in pieces and distributed to the young people, who decorated their buttonholes with it, after an old custom, which is still maintained in some patriarchal families. This caused the bride to blush to the whites of her eyes.... But her distress was at a height when M. de Peyrehorade, having called for silence, sang her certain Catalan verses, impromptu, he said. Here is the sense of them, if I understood it aright:
“What is this, my friends! Has the wine which I have drunk made me see double! There are two Venuses here....”
The bridegroom suddenly looked round with an air of alarm which made everybody laugh.
“Yes,” pursued M. de Peyrehorade, “there are two Venuses under my roof. The one, I found in the earth, like a truffle; the other, descended from the skies, has just divided her girdle among us.”
He meant her garter.
“My son, choose which you prefer, the Roman Venus or the Catalan Venus. The rascal takes the Catalan, and his choice is the best. The Roman is black, the Catalan is white. The Roman is cold, the Catalan sets every one who approaches her on fire.”
This conclusion excited such a roar, such noisy applause and such resounding laughter, that I thought the ceiling was going to fall on our heads. Round the table there were only three solemn faces, the young couple’s and my own. I had a bad headache; and besides, for some reason or other, a marriage always depresses me. This one, besides, rather disgusted me.
The last couplets having been sung by the depute mayor—and very free they were, I ought to mention—we went into the drawing-room to witness the retiral of the bride, who was soon to be conducted to her chamber, for it was near midnight. M. Alphonse drew me into a window recess, and said, with averted eyes:
“You will laugh at me.... But I don’t know what is wrong with me.... I am bewitched! Devil take me!”
The first thought which came into my head was that he imagined himself threatened with some misfortune similar to those mentioned by Montaigne and Madame de Sévigné:
“The whole Empire of Love is replete with tragic histories, etc.”
“I thought that sort of accidents never happened except to persons of intelligence,” I said to myself.
“You’ve drunk too much Collioure, my dear Monsieur Alphonse,” I said to him. “I warned you.”
“Yes, perhaps. But this is something much more dreadful.”
His voice was broken. I really thought he was drunk.
“You know my ring?” he continued after a pause.
“What! Has it been taken away?”
“No.”
“Then you have it, have you not?”
“No ... I ... I can’t get it off that devil of a Venus’s finger.”
“A fine story! You’ve not pulled hard enough.”
“Not at all.... But the Venus.... She has closed her finger.”
He stared at me with a haggard face, supporting himself by the window-fastening to keep himself from falling.
“A pretty tale!” I said to him. “You have pushed the ring too far on. You’ll get it off to-morrow with pincers. But take care not to spoil the statue.”
“I tell you no! The Venus’s finger is turned in, crooked in; she has her hand clenched, do you understand?... She is my wife, it seems, since I have given her my ring.... She won’t give it back now.”
I felt a sudden shiver, and for an instant my flesh crept. Then a great sigh that he gave sent a reek of wine over to me, and all my emotion disappeared.
“The silly fool,” thought I, “is quite drunk.”
“You are an antiquary, sir,” the bridegroom added in a lamentable tone; “you know about those statues ... perhaps there is some spring, some devilment, that I don’t know about.... Would you go and see?”
“Willingly,” I said. “Come along with me.”
“No, I’d rather you went alone.”
I went out of the drawing-room. The weather had changed during supper, and the rain was beginning to fall heavily. I was about to ask for an umbrella, when a thought arrested me. I should be a great fool, I said to myself, to go and verify what a drunk man had told me! Besides, he perhaps wished to play some ill-natured joke on me to make me a laughing-stock for those good provincials; and the least that would result to me from it would be to get soaked to the skin and catch a bad cold.
From the door I cast a glance at the statue all running with water, and I went upstairs to my room without returning to the drawing-room. I went to bed; but sleep was long of coming. All the scenes of the day presented themselves to my mind. I thought of that young girl, so lovely and so pure, left to the mercy of a brutal drunkard. “What an odious thing,” I said to myself, “a marriage of convenience is! A mayor puts on a tricolour scarf, a parson a stole, and there, the most respectable girl in the world is handed over to the Minotaur! what can two beings who do not love each other have to say to each other at a moment such as this, a moment which two lovers would purchase at the price of their lives? Can a woman ever love a man whom she has once seen coarse? First impressions are never effaced, and I am sure of this, that that M. Alphonse will richly deserve to be hated....”
During my monologue, which I have shortened considerably, I had heard a great deal of coming and going in the house, doors opening and shutting, carriages driving away; then I seemed to have heard the light steps of a number of women on the stair, making for the end of the corridor opposite to my room. It was probably the bride’s attendants taking her to bed. In course of time they had gone downstairs again. Madame de Peyrehorade’s door was shut. How anxious and uneasy that poor girl must be, I thought! I turned about on my bed in a bad temper. A bachelor cuts a foolish figure in a house where a marriage is being held.
Silence reigned for some time; then it was broken by heavy steps climbing up the stair. The wooden treads cracked loudly.
“The brute!” I exclaimed. “I’ll wager he’s going to fall on the stairs.”
All became quiet again. I took a book to change the course of my thoughts. It was a statistical account of the department, graced with a memorandum by M. de Peyrehorade on the druidical monuments of the Prades hundred. I fell over at the third page.
I slept badly, and woke several times. It might be about five o’clock in the morning, and I had been awake twenty minutes or more, when the cock crew. Day was about to dawn. Just then I heard distinctly the same heavy steps, the same cracking of the stair, that I had heard before falling asleep. It struck me as strange. I yawned and tried to think why M. Alphonse was rising so early in the morning. I could imagine no likely reason. I was about to close my eyes again, when my attention was excited anew by a strange trampling, with which the ringing of bells and the sound of doors being noisily opened soon mingled; then I made out confused cries.
“My drunk friend has set the house afire somewhere!” I thought, as I jumped down out of bed.
I dressed in a hurry and went out into the corridor. From the opposite end came cries and lamentations, and one heart-rending voice dominated all the others—” My son! My son!” It was evident that some calamity had happened to M. Alphonse. I ran to the nuptial chamber: it was full of people. The first thing that met my view was the young man half-clad, stretched across the bed, the frame of which was broken. He was livid and motionless. His mother was weeping and crying at his side. M. de Peyrehorade was busy, rubbing his temples with eau-de-Cologne, or holding smelling-salts to his nose. Alas! his son had been dead for a long time. On a sofa at the other end of the room was the bride, writhing in horrible convulsions. She was uttering inarticulate cries, and two strong servants had the utmost difficulty in holding her.
“Good God!” I exclaimed, “whatever has happened?”
I went up to the bed and raised the unfortunate young man’s body; it was already stiff and cold. His clenched teeth and his blackened face gave evidence of the most frightful agony. It was only too plain that his end had been violent and his death-struggles terrible. Yet there was no trace of blood on his clothes. I opened his shirt, and on his chest I saw a livid mark, which was continued round his ribs and back. One would have thought that he had been crushed in a band of iron.
My foot trod upon something hard on the carpet; I stooped down, and saw the diamond ring.
I drew M. de Peyrehorade and his wife into their room; then I had the bride taken there.
“You have still a daughter,” I said to them, “you owe her your care.” Then I left them alone.
There seemed to me no doubt that M. Alphonse had been the victim of a murder, the perpetrators of which had found means to let themselves in to the bride’s room at night. Yet those bruises on his chest and their circular direction puzzled me considerably, for a stick or an iron bar could not have produced them. All at once I remembered to have heard that the bravos of Valencia make use of long bags of leather, stuffed with fine sand, to knock down the persons whom they have been paid to kill. I immediately remembered the Aragonese muleteer and his threat; at the same time I scarcely dared to think that he had taken such a terrible revenge for a harmless joke.
I went about the house, searching everywhere for traces of breaking in, without finding them anywhere. I went down to the garden, to see whether the murderers could have got in from that side; but I found no certain traces there. Besides last night’s rain had so soaked the earth that it could not have retained any very sharp impression. All the same, I observed some footprints deeply imprinted in the ground; they were in two contrary directions, but in the same line, starting from the corner of the hedge beside the tennis-court and ending at the house-door. They might have been made by M. Alphonse when he went to look for his ring on the statue’s finger. On the other hand, the hedge at that place was not so close as elsewhere; that must have been the spot where the murderers crossed it. Passing and repassing before the statue, I halted for a moment to look at it. This time, I confess, I could not contemplate its expression of ironical wickedness without fear; and, my head full of the horrible scenes which I had just witnessed, I seemed to behold an infernal deity applauding the misfortune which had overtaken that house.
I got back to my room and remained there until midday. Then I went to inquire for my hosts. They were a little more composed. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig—I ought to say M. Alphonse’s widow—had recovered consciousness. She had even spoken with the public prosecutor from Perpignan, who was then on circuit at Ille, and that official had taken her deposition. He asked for mine. I told him what I knew, and did not conceal my suspicions about the Aragonese muleteer. He ordered him to be arrested at once.
“Have you learned anything from Madame Alphonse?” I asked the public prosecutor, when my deposition had been written and signed.
“That unhappy young lady has gone out of her mind,” he said to me with a sad smile. “Out of her mind! Quite out! Here’s her story.
“She had been in bed, she says, for some minutes, with the curtains drawn, when the door of her room opened, and some one came in. Madame Alphonse was then on the far side of the bed, with her face to the wall. She did not move, being sure that it was her husband. An instant later the bed groaned as if it was loaded with an enormous weight. She was very much afraid, but did not dare to turn her head. Five minutes, ten minutes perhaps—she could form no notion of the time—passed thus. Then she made an involuntary movement, or rather the person who was in the bed made one, and she felt the contact of something as cold as ice, these are the expressions she used. She buried herself in the far side of the bed, trembling in every limb. Shortly afterwards the door opened a second time, and some one entered, who said, ‛Good evening, my little wife.’ Very soon after, the curtains were drawn aside. She heard a smothered cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up, and seemed to stretch forward his arms. She turned her head then ... and saw, she declares, her husband on his knees at the bed-side, his head level with the pillow, in the arms of a sort of greenish giant who was hugging him with violence. She says, and she has repeated it to me a score of times, poor woman! ... she says that she recognized ... can you guess? The bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue.... Since it came into the neighbourhood, every one dreams about it. But to resume the unhappy madwoman’s story. At that sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her reason some time before. She is quite unable to say how long she continued in her faint. When she came to herself, she still saw the phantom, or the statue, as she always calls it, motionless, its legs and the lower part of its body in the bed, its bust and arms stretched over, and in its arms her husband, without movement. A cock crew. The statue then got out of the bed, let fall the corpse, and went out. Madame Alphonse tore at the bell-pull, and you know the rest.”
They brought up the Spaniard; he was calm, and defended himself with much coolness and presence of mind. To be sure, he did not deny the saying which I had heard; but he explained that all he meant by it was that, next day, when he was rested, he would have won a tennis-match from his conqueror. I recollect that he added:
“When an Aragonese is affronted, he does not wait till the next day to avenge himself. If I had thought that M. Alphonse meant to insult me, I would have given him one in the belly with my knife on the spot.”
They compared his shoes with the footprints in the garden; his shoes were very much larger.
Finally the innkeeper, with whom the man had lodged, affirmed that he had spent the whole night rubbing and dosing one of his mules that was sick.
Moreover, this Aragonese was a man of good reputation, well known in the neighbourhood, to which he came every year on his business. So they released him and made their excuses to him.
I forgot the deposition of a servant, who had been the last to see M. Alphonse in life. It was at the moment when he was about to go upstairs to his wife, and, calling the servant, he had asked him with an air of anxiety, if he knew where I was. The servant answered him that he had seen nothing of me. M. Alphonse then heaved a sigh, and remained speechless for more than a minute, then he said, “Well, I declare, the devil must have taken him away too!”
I asked this man whether M. Alphonse had his diamond ring when he spoke to him. The servant hesitated about answering; at last he said that he thought no, but that he really had not paid any attention.
“If he had had the ring on his finger,” he added, correcting himself, “I should certainly have noticed it, for I thought that he had given it to Madame Alphonse.”
While questioning this man I felt something of the superstitious terror which Madame Alphonse’s deposition had spread all through the house. The public prosecutor looked at me with a smile, and I took good care not to say anything more.
Some hours after M. Alphonse’s funeral, I made ready to leave Ille. M. de Peyrehorade’s carriage was to take me to Perpignan. In spite of his weak condition, the poor old man insisted on accompanying me to the gate of his garden. We crossed it in silence, he dragging himself along painfully, leaning on my arm. At the moment of our parting, I cast a last look on the Venus. I could well foresee that my host, although he did not share the terror and hatred with which it inspired a part of his family, would wish to rid himself of an object which would remind him unceasingly of a fearful calamity. My intention was to get him to promise to place it in a museum. I was hesitating about how to broach the matter, when M. de Peyrehorade mechanically turned his head in the direction in which he saw me looking fixedly. He caught sight of the statue, and at once burst into tears. I embraced him, and, without venturing to say a single word to him, got into the carriage.
Since my departure I have not learned that the slightest fresh light has been shed upon this mysterious catastrophe.
M. de Peyrehorade died some months after his son. By his will he bequeathed to me his manuscripts, which I shall perhaps publish some day. I have found no trace whatever among them of the paper dealing with the inscriptions on the Venus.
P.S.—My friend M. de P. has just written to me from Perpignan that the statue no longer exists. After her husband’s death, Madame de Peyrehorade’s first care was to have it melted down and made into a bell, and in this new form it is doing duty at the church of Ille. But, adds M. de P., it would appear that ill luck pursues the owners of that bronze. Since this bell began to ring at Ille the vines have twice been frosted.