The twelve best short stories in the French language

by Unknown

IX

Thereupon I flew away, always weeping; and the wind, which is the Fate of birds, bore me to a branch in Morfontaine. This time they were all in bed.—” What a marriage!” I said to myself, “What a business! No doubt it was with a good intention that the poor child made herself white; but I am none the less to be pitied, and she is none the less russet.”

The nightingale was singing again. Alone, in the bosom of the night, he was enjoying whole-heartedly his divine gift, which makes him so superior to the poets, and was uttering his thought freely to the silence that surrounded him. I could not resist the temptation of going up to him and addressing him.

“How happy you are!” I said to him. “Not only do you sing as much as you wish, and very well, too, and all the world listens to you; but you have a wife and children, your nest, your friends, a good pillow of moss, full moon, and no newspapers. Rubini and Rossini are nothing compared to you: you are as good as the one, and you anticipate the other. I too have sung, sir, and it was pitiable. I have drawn up words in serried rows like so many Prussian soldiers, I have strung stale commonplaces together, while you were in the wood. Is your secret to be discovered?”

“Yes,” the nightingale replied to me, “but it is not what you imagine. My wife bores me, I do not love her at all; I am in love with the rose; Sadi the Persian has mentioned it. I sing myself hoarse for her all night long, but she sleeps and does not hear me. Her chalice is shut at the present moment: she is nursing an old beetle in it—and to-morrow morning, when I reach my bed worn out with suffering and fatigue, then she will spread herself out to let a bee devour her heart!”

VANINA VANINI;
OR, PARTICULARS OF THE LAST LODGE
OF CARBONARI DISCOVERED IN THE PAPAL STATES
“STENDHAL” (HENRY BEYLE)

One evening in the spring of 182-all Rome was in a stir: the Duke of B——, the famous banker, was giving a ball at his new palace in the Piazza Venezia. The utmost magnificence that the arts of Italy and the luxury of Paris and London could produce had been brought together to embellish the palace. The throng was immense. The blonde, reserved beauties of noble England had solicited the honour of being present at this ball; they arrived in crowds. The handsomest women in Rome disputed the prize of beauty with them. A young girl, whom the brilliance of her eyes and her ebon hair proclaimed a Roman, entered escorted by her father; all eyes followed her. A singular pride shone in all her movements.

The strangers as they entered were visibly impressed by the magnificence of the ball. “None of the fêtes of the kings of Europe comes anywhere near this,” they said.

The kings have not a palace of Roman architecture: they are obliged to invite the great ladies of their courts; the Duke of B—— only invites pretty women. That evening he had been happy in his invitations; the men seemed dazzled. Among so many remarkable women the difficulty was to decide who was the handsomest. The choice for some time remained undecided; but at last the Princess Vanina Vanini, the young girl with the black hair and the eye of fire, was proclaimed queen of the ball. At once the strangers and the young men of Rome, abandoning all the other saloons, formed a crowd in the one where she was.

Her father, Prince Asdrubale Vanini, had wished her to dance first with two or three German sovereigns. After that she accepted the invitations of some Englishmen, very handsome and very noble; their air of solemnity wearied her. She evidently found more pleasure in tormenting young Livio Savelli, who seemed deeply in love. He was the most magnificent young man in Rome, and, what was more, he too was a prince; but, if you had given him a novel to read, he would have thrown the volume away after twenty pages, saying that it gave him a headache. That was a disadvantage in Vanina’s eyes.

About midnight a piece of news spread through the ball and produced a great stir. A young carbonaro, who had been confined in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, had just escaped that very night by means of a disguise; and, with an excess of romantic daring, on arriving at the last ward of the prison, he had attacked the soldiers with a poniard; but he himself had been wounded; the police were tracking him through the streets by his blood, and they hoped to find him.

As this anecdote was being told, Don Livio Savelli, dazzled by the graces and the triumphs of Vanina, with whom he had just been dancing, said to her as, almost beside himself with love, he led her back to her place:

“But, really, who could please you?”

“That young carbonaro who has just escaped,” Vanina answered him; “he at least has done something more than take the trouble of being born.”

Prince Don Asdrubale came up to his daughter. He was a rich man, who for the last twenty years had not taken reckoning with his steward, who lent him his own revenues at a very high rate of interest. If you met him in the street, you would have taken him for an old actor; you would not have observed that his hands were ornamented with five or six enormous rings set with big diamonds. His two sons had become Jesuits and afterwards died insane. He had forgotten them; but he was vexed that his only daughter Vanina would not marry. She was now nineteen, and had refused the most brilliant matches. What was her reason? The same as Sulla’s for abdicating: her contempt for the Romans.

The day after the ball, Vanina noticed that her father, the most careless of men, who had never in his life taken the trouble to carry a key, very carefully shut the door of a little stair which led to some rooms on the third floor of the palace. The windows of these rooms looked on to a terrace adorned with orange-trees. Vanina went to pay some visits in Rome; on her return, the main entrance of the palace was blocked by the preparations for an illumination, so the carriage went in by the courts at the back. Vanina looked up, and saw to her astonishment that one of the windows of the rooms which her father had shut with such care was open. She got rid of her companion, climbed to the top of the palace, and searched about until she found a little grated window, which gave a view of the terrace ornamented with orange-trees. The open window that she had noticed was close beside her. That room must certainly be occupied; but by whom? Next day, Vanina managed to obtain the key of a little door which opened on to the terrace ornamented with orange-trees.

She stealthily approached the window, which was still open. A sun-shutter helped to cover it. Inside the room was a bed and some one in the bed. Her first impulse was to withdraw; but she caught sight of a woman’s dress thrown on a chair. Looking more closely at the person in the bed, she saw that she was fair and apparently very young. She had no more doubt about its being a woman. The dress thrown down on the chair was stained with blood; there was blood on the woman’s shoes, too, laid on a table. The stranger moved; Vanina perceived that she was wounded. A large cloth, spotted with blood, covered her breast; the cloth was only kept on with ribbons; it was no surgeon’s hand that had fixed it so. Vanina noticed that every day, about four o’clock, her father shut himself up in his room, then went to see the stranger; he soon came downstairs again, and took the carriage to visit the Countess Vitteleschi. Immediately he had gone, Vanina climbed up to the little terrace from which she could see the stranger. Her feelings were actively excited in favour of this most unfortunate young woman; she tried to guess at her adventure. The blood-stained dress thrown on a chair seemed to have been pierced with dagger-thrusts. Vanina could count the rents. One day she saw the stranger more distinctly: her blue eyes were gazing towards heaven; she seemed to be praying. Soon tears filled her lovely eyes; the young princess could scarcely refrain from speaking to her. The next day Vanina summoned up courage to hide herself in the little terrace before her father arrived. She saw Don Asdrubale go into the stranger’s room; he carried a little basket containing provisions. The prince seemed to be disturbed and did not say much. He spoke so low that, although the sash of the window was open, Vanina could not make out what he said. He went away immediately.

“The poor woman must have some very terrible enemies,” said Vanina to herself, “that my father, who is usually so careless, dares not trust anybody, and takes the trouble of climbing a hundred and twenty steps every day.”

One evening when Vanina softly advanced her head in the direction of the stranger’s window, she met her eyes, and all was discovered. Vanina fell on her knees, and exclaimed:

“I love you; I am at your service!”

The stranger signed to her to come in.

“I owe you many apologies!” exclaimed Vanina. “How offensive my foolish curiosity must seem to you! I swear secrecy, and, if you insist on it, I shall never return.”

“Who would not be happy to see you?” said the stranger. “Do you live in this palace?”

“Of course,” replied Vanina; “but I see you do not know me; I am Vanina, Don Asdrubale’s daughter.”

The stranger looked at her in astonishment, blushed deeply, and then added:

“Permit me to hope that you will come and see me every day; but I should like the prince not to know of your visits.”

Vanina’s heart beat fast; the stranger’s manners seemed to her full of distinction. This poor young woman had no doubt offended some powerful person. Had she, perhaps, in a moment of jealousy, killed her lover? Vanina could not conceive of a commonplace reason for her misfortune. The stranger told her that she had received a wound in the shoulder, which had penetrated to her chest and was causing her much suffering. She often found her mouth full of blood.

“Yet you have no surgeon?” exclaimed Vanina.

“You are aware,” said the stranger, “that at Rome the surgeons have to give the police an exact report of all the wounds that they treat. The prince condescends to bind up my wounds with his own hands, in the cloth which you see.”

With the most perfect grace, the stranger avoided any bemoaning over her accident; Vanina loved her to madness. One thing, however, astonished the young princess greatly, namely that, in the middle of a conversation which was certainly serious enough, the stranger had great difficulty in suppressing a sudden desire to laugh.

“I should be happy,” said Vanina, “to know your name.”

“They call me Clementine.”

“Well, dear Clementine, to-morrow at five o’clock I’ll come and see you.”

Next day, Vanina found her new friend very ill.

“I want to get a surgeon to you,” said Vanina, embracing her.

“I would rather die,” said the stranger. “Why should I wish to compromise my benefactors?”

“The surgeon to Monsignore Savelli-Catanzara, the governor of Rome, is the son of one of our servants,” Vanina replied eagerly; “he is devoted to us, and, in his position, is afraid of no one. My father does not do justice to his fidelity; I am going to send for him.”

“I don’t want any surgeon,” the stranger exclaimed, with a sharpness which surprised Vanina. “Come and see me; and, if God must call me to Himself, I shall die happy in your arms.”

Next day, the stranger was still worse.

“If you love me,” said Vanina, as she left her, “you’ll see a surgeon.”

“If he comes, my happiness is gone.”

“I’m going to send for one,” replied Vanina.

Without a word, the stranger detained her and took her hand, which she covered with kisses. There was a long silence; the stranger’s eyes were full of tears. At last she let go Vanina’s hand, and, with the air with which she might have gone to her death, said to her:

“I have a confession to make to you. The day before yesterday I told you a lie when I said I was Clementine; I am an unfortunate carbonaro——.”

Vanina, astonished, pushed back her chair and stood up at once.

“I am aware,” continued the carbonaro, “that this confession will cause me to lose the only good thing that attaches me to life; but it is unworthy of me to deceive you. I am called Pietro Missirilli; I am nineteen years old; my father is a poor surgeon at Sant’ Angelo in Vado, for my part I am a carbonaro. Our lodge was surprised; I was brought, in chains, from Romagna to Rome. Buried in a dungeon lighted night and day by a lamp, I passed thirteen months there. A charitable soul conceived the idea of rescuing me. They dressed me in women’s clothes. As I was coming out of prison and was passing the warders at the last door, one of them cursed the carbonari; I gave him a slap. I assure you that this was not a piece of vain bravado, but simply thoughtlessness. Pursued through the streets of Rome at night after this imprudence, wounded with bayonets, fast losing my strength, I rushed up the stairs of a mansion, the door of which was open; I heard the soldiers coming up after me; I sprang into the garden; I fell down only a few paces from a woman who was walking there.”

“The Countess Vitteleschi, my father’s friend!” said Vanina.

“What! Has she told you?” exclaimed Missirilli. “In any case, the lady, whose name must never be uttered, saved my life. As the soldiers came into her house to seize me, your father took me out of it in his carriage. I feel very ill; for some days this bayonet-wound in my shoulder has prevented me from breathing. I am going to die, in despair, too, because I shall not see you again.”

Vanina had listened with impatience; she went out hastily: Missirilli could discover no pity in her fine eyes; only the expression of a haughty character which had been wounded.

At night, a surgeon appeared; he was alone. Missirilli was in despair; he feared that he would never see Vanina again. He questioned the surgeon, who bled him and gave him no answer. The succeeding days, the same silence. Pietro’s eyes never left the terrace-window by which Vanina had been accustomed to enter; he was very unhappy. Once, about midnight, he thought he saw some one in the shadow on the terrace: was it Vanina?

Vanina came every night to press her cheek against the young carbonaro’s window-panes.

“If I speak to him,” she said to herself, “I am lost! No, I must not see him again!”

Having taken this resolution, she recalled, in spite of herself, the fondness which she had conceived for the young man when she so foolishly took him for a woman. And now, after so sweet an intimacy, she must forget him! In her more reasonable moments, Vanina was terrified at the change which had taken place in her thoughts. Since Missirilli had named himself, all the things she had been accustomed to think about were as if covered with a veil, and seemed very far away.

A week had not passed before Vanina, pale and trembling, entered the young carbonaro’s room with the surgeon. She came to tell him that the prince must be made to promise to let a servant take his place. She did not remain ten seconds; but some days afterwards she came back again with the surgeon, out of humanity. One night, though Missirilli was much better and Vanina had no longer the excuse of fearing for his life, she ventured to come alone. Nothing could exceed Missirilli’s happiness at seeing her, but he thought to conceal his love; above all, he did not wish to forget the dignity of a man. Vanina, who had come to his room covered with blushes and afraid she would have to listen to words of love, was disconcerted by the noble and devoted, but far from tender, friendliness with which he received her. She went away without his trying to detain her.

Some days after, when she returned, the same conduct, the same assurances of respectful devotion and eternal gratitude. So far from having to put a curb on the young carbonaro’s transports, Vanina asked herself if she alone was in love. This young girl, till then so proud, bitterly felt the extent of her folly. She affected gaiety, even coldness, came less often, but could not bring herself to cease seeing the young invalid.

Missirilli, burning with love, but remembering his obscure birth and his duty towards himself, had vowed never to descend to talking of love unless Vanina remained a week without seeing him. The young princess’s pride disputed every foot of the way.

“Well,” she said to herself at last, “if I see him, it is on my own account, it is for my amusement, and I will never avow the interest with which he inspires me.”

She paid long visits to Missirilli, who talked with her as he might have done if twenty people had been present. One night, after having spent the whole day in detesting him and promising herself to be even colder and severer than usual to him, she told him that she loved him. Soon she had nothing left to refuse him.

Though her folly was great, it must be owned that Vanina was perfectly happy. Missirilli had no more thought of what he considered due to his dignity as a man; he loved as they love for the first time at nineteen and in Italy. He had all the scruples of passionate love, even to the extent of acknowledging to the proud young princess the policy which he had employed to make her fall in love with him. He was astonished at the excess of his happiness. Four months passed only too quickly. One day the surgeon gave the invalid his liberty. “But what am I to do?” thought Missirilli. “Am I to remain in hiding under the roof of one of the handsomest women in Rome? And the vile tyrants who kept me thirteen months in prison without letting me see the light of day will think they have broken my spirit! Italy, thou art unfortunate indeed, if thy children abandon thee for so little!”

Vanina never doubted that Pietro’s greatest happiness would be to remain attached to her for ever; he seemed only too happy; but a saying of General Bonaparte rankled in the young man’s soul and influenced all his conduct towards women. In 1796, when General Bonaparte was leaving Brescia, the magistrates, who accompanied him to the gate of the town, said to him that the Brescians loved liberty more than all other Italians.

“Yes,” he answered, “they love to talk about it to their mistresses.”

Missirilli said to Vanina with some constraint:

“As soon as it is night, I must go out.”

“Take good care to be in the palace again before daybreak; I’ll wait for you.”

“At daybreak I’ll be several miles from Rome.”

“Indeed,” said Vanina coldly, “and where are you going to?”

“To Romagna, to take my revenge.”

“Seeing that I am rich,” Vanina said with the calmest air imaginable, “I hope that you will accept some arms and some money from me.”

Missirilli looked at her for a moment without moving a muscle; then, throwing himself into her arms:

“Soul of my soul, you make me forget everything else, even my duty. But, the nobler your heart is, the better you should understand me.”

Vanina wept copiously, and it was settled that he should not leave Rome for another two days yet.

“Pietro,” she said to him next day, “you have often told me that a well-known man, a Roman prince for example, who had command of plenty of money, could render great service to the cause of liberty, if ever Austria should be involved in any great war at a distance from us.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Pietro in astonishment.

“Well then, you have courage; all you lack is position: I am going to offer you my hand and two hundred thousand livres a year. I undertake to get my father’s consent.”

Pietro threw himself at her feet; Vanina was radiant with joy.

“I love you passionately,” he said; “but I am a poor servant of my country; and, the unhappier Italy is, the more faithful I must be to her. To obtain Don Asdrubale’s consent, I should have to play a sorry part for many years. Vanina, I refuse you.”

Missirilli was in a hurry to commit himself by this speech. His courage threatened to fail him.

“My misfortune,” he exclaimed, “is that I love you more than life, that to leave Rome is the worst of tortures for me. Ah! why is Italy not delivered from the barbarians? With what pleasure I should embark along with you to go and live in America!”

Vanina remained as if frozen. This refusal of her hand had astonished her pride; but soon she cast herself into Missirilli’s arms.

“You never seemed so dear to me as now,” she exclaimed; “yes, my little country surgeon, I am yours for ever. You are a great man, like our ancient Romans.”

All ideas of the future, all the gloomy suggestions of good sense disappeared; there was a moment of perfect love. When they were able to talk sensibly, Vanina said:

“I shall be in Romagna almost as soon as you. I’ll get sent to the baths at Poretta. I will stop at our castle at San Nicolo, near Forli——”

“There I’ll spend my life with you!” exclaimed Missirilli.

“My part in future is to dare everything,” Vanina resumed with a sigh. “I shall ruin myself for you, but what matter——. Could you love a woman who has lost her honour?”

“Are you not my wife?” said Missirilli, “and a wife always adored? I shall know how to love you and protect you.”

Vanina had to go and pay visits. Scarcely had she left Missirilli when he began to think his conduct barbarous.

“What is our country, after all?” he said to himself. “It is not a being to whom we owe any gratitude for any benefit, and who might be unhappy and curse us if we failed to be grateful. Country and liberty are like my cloak, a thing that is useful to me, that I must buy, no doubt, if I have not inherited it from my father; but after all I love country and liberty because these two things are useful to me. If I can do nothing with them, if they are no more use to me than a cloak in August, what is the good of buying them, at an enormous price too? Vanina is so beautiful! She has such a remarkable mind! People will seek to please her; she will forget me. What woman ever had only one lover? Those Roman princes, whom I despise as citizens, have such an advantage over me! They must be very lovable! Ah, if I go away, she will forget me, and I shall lose her for ever!”

In the middle of the night Vanina came to see him; he told her of the indecision in which he had been plunged, and the examination to which, because he loved her, he had subjected the great word country. Vanina was very happy.

“If he had to choose definitely between his country and me,” she said to herself, “the choice would fall on me.”

The clock of the neighbouring church struck three; the moment of their last farewells arrived. Pietro tore himself from the arms of his beloved. He was already descending the little stair, when Vanina, restraining her tears, said to him with a smile:

“If you had been tended by some poor countrywoman, would you not do something out of gratitude? Would you not try to repay her? The future is uncertain; you are going to travel amidst enemies; give me three days out of gratitude, as if I were a poor woman, and in repayment of my trouble.”

Missirilli remained. At last he quitted Rome. Thanks to a passport bought from a foreign embassy, he reached his home. There was great rejoicing; they had given him up for dead. His friends wished to celebrate his safe return by killing one or two carabineers, as the police in the Papal states are called.

“Do not let us kill an Italian that knows the use of arms, unless we are forced to,” said Missirilli; “our country is not an island, like happy England: we need soldiers to resist the intervention of the kings of Europe.”

Shortly afterwards, Missirilli, hard pressed by the carabineers, killed two of them with the pistols that Vanina had given him. A price was set on his head.

Vanina did not make her appearance in Romagna: Missirilli thought he was forgotten. His vanity was hurt; he began to dwell on the difference of rank which separated him from his mistress. In a moment of softening and regret for his past happiness, he took the notion of returning to Rome to see what Vanina was doing. This mad thought was on the point of prevailing over what he believed to be his duty, when one evening the bell of a mountain-church sounded the angelus in a strange fashion, as if the ringer were preoccupied. It was the signal for the meeting of the lodge of carbonari to which Missirilli had been affiliated on his arrival in Romagna. That same night, they all met in a certain hermitage in the woods. The two hermits, stupefied with opium, had no suspicion of the use that was being made of their little dwelling. Missirilli, who arrived very downcast, learned that the head of the lodge had been arrested, and that he, a young man of barely twenty, was to be elected head of a lodge which included men over fifty, who had been engaged in the conspiracies since Murat’s expedition of 1815. Pietro felt his heart beat at receiving this unexpected honour. As soon as he was alone, he resolved to think no more of the young Roman lady who had forgotten him, and to consecrate all his thoughts to delivering Italy from the barbarians.[18]

Two days later, Missirilli saw in the list of arrivals and departures sent to him as head of the lodge that the Princess Vanina had just arrived at her castle of San Nicolo. To read this name caused more trouble than pleasure to his soul. In vain he thought to make sure of his fidelity to his country by restraining himself from hastening that very night to the castle of San Nicolo; the thought of Vanina whom he was neglecting prevented his fulfilling his duties in a reasonable fashion. He saw her the next day; she loved him as she had done at Rome. Her father, who wished to marry her, had hindered her departure. She brought two thousand sequins with her. This unexpected assistance helped wonderfully to establish Missirilli in his new dignity. Thanks to them they got daggers made in Corfu, they gained over the confidential secretary of the legate charged with pursuing the carbonari, and also obtained the list of parish priests who served as spies to the government.

It was at this period that one, not the most unreasonable, of the conspiracies that have been attempted in unhappy Italy was finally organized. I shall not enter into details that would be out of place here. I shall content myself with saying that, if the enterprise had been crowned with success, Missirilli would have been able to claim a great share of the glory. According to it several thousand insurgents would have risen at a given signal, and awaited under arms the arrival of their superior heads. The decisive moment was at hand, when, as always happens, the conspiracy was paralysed by the arrests of the leaders.

Vanina had not long arrived in Romagna when she fancied she could see that love of country would make her lover forget all other love. The young Roman’s pride was chafed. She tried in vain to reason with herself; black disappointment took possession of her; she found herself cursing liberty. One day when she had come to Forli to see Missirilli, she was no longer mistress of her grief, which, so far, her pride had always been able to master.

“Really,” she said to him, “you love me like a husband; that’s not what I want.”

Her tears soon began to flow; but they were tears of shame at having descended to reproaches. Missirilli responded to her tears like one preoccupied. All at once it occurred to Vanina to leave him and return to Rome. She found a cruel joy in punishing herself for the weakness which had just made her speak. After some moments’ silence, her mind was made up; she decided that she was unworthy of Missirilli if she did not leave him. She rejoiced in the prospect of his sad surprise when he sought for her at his side, and did not find her. Soon the thought that she had been unable to win the love of the man for whose sake she had committed so many follies revived all her tenderness. She thereupon broke the silence, and did everything in the world to elicit a word of love from him. He said many very tender things to her, with an air of abstraction; but it was with quite a much profounder accent that, talking of his political enterprises, he exclaimed mournfully:

“Ah, if this affair does not succeed, if the government discovers it this time, I’ll give it up!”

Vanina remained motionless. For an hour and more she had had the feeling that she was seeing her lover for the last time. His words flashed a fatal ray into her mind. She said to herself:

“The carbonari have already got several thousand sequins from me. There can be no doubt about my devotion to the conspiracy.”

Vanina at last roused herself from her reverie, to say to Pietro:

“Will you come and spend twenty-four hours with me at the castle of San Nicolo? Your gathering this evening does not require your presence. To-morrow morning, at San Nicolo, we can walk about; that will calm your agitation and give you all the coolness that you need at such an important juncture.”

Pietro consented.

Vanina left him to make preparations for the journey, locking, as usual, the little room in which she hid him.

She hastened to a former waiting-woman of hers, who had left her to get married and set up a small business at Forli. On arriving at this woman’s, she hurriedly wrote on the margin of a book of hours, which she found in her room, an exact indication of the place where the lodge of carbonari was to meet that same night. She concluded her denunciation with these words: “This lodge consists of nineteen members; here are their names and addresses.” After writing this list, very exact, except that Missirilli’s name was omitted, she said to the woman, whom she could depend on:

“Take this book to the Cardinal Legate; let him read what is written and give you back the book. Here are ten sequins; if ever the legate pronounces your name, your death is assured; but you will save my life if you get the legate to read the page I have just written.”

Everything succeeded perfectly. The legate’s fears prevented him from behaving like a great lord. He let the woman of the people who asked to speak with him appear in his presence masked, but on condition that she had her hands tied. In this state the shopwoman was brought into the presence of the great person, whom she found entrenched behind an immense table covered with a green cloth.

The legate read the page of the book of hours, holding it well away from him, for fear of some subtle poison. He gave it back to the shopwoman, and did not have her followed. In less than forty minutes after leaving her lover, Vanina, who had seen her former waiting-woman’s return, appeared once more to Missirilli, convinced that thenceforth he was entirely hers. She told him that there was an extraordinary commotion in the town; patrols of carabineers were to be seen in streets where they never used to go.

“If you’ll take my advice,” she added, “we’ll start for San Nicolo at once.”

Missirilli consented to do so. They walked to the young princess’s carriage, which, with her companion, a discreet and well-paid confidante, was waiting for her half a league outside the town.

On arriving at the castle of San Nicolo, Vanina, who was uneasy about the strange step that she had taken, redoubled her tenderness to her lover. But it seemed to her that in talking love to him she was acting a part. The night before, when she played the traitor, she had forgotten about remorse. As she clasped her lover in her arms, she said to herself:

“There is a word that might be uttered in his hearing, and, once it was pronounced, he would have a horror of me at once and for ever.”

In the middle of the night, one of Vanina’s servants came abruptly into her room. This man was a carbonaro, though she did not suspect it. So, then, Missirilli had secrets from her, even about details like that. She shuddered. The man had come to warn Missirilli that during the night the houses of nineteen carbonari at Forli had been searched, and they themselves arrested the moment they returned from the lodge. Although taken by surprise, nine had escaped. The carabineers had been able to take ten of them to prison in the citadel. On entering it, one of them had thrown himself down the well, which is very deep, and had killed himself.

Vanina was covered with confusion; fortunately Pietro did not observe it: he could have read her crime in her eyes.... “At this very moment,” the servant added, “the garrison of Forli is forming a cordon in all the streets. Each soldier is within speaking distance of his neighbour. The inhabitants cannot cross from one side of the street to the other except where an officer is stationed.”

After the man had gone, Pietro was pensive, but only for an instant.

“There is nothing that can be done for the moment,” he said at last.

Vanina was like to die; she trembled beneath her lover’s glance.

“Whatever is wrong with you?” he said at last.

Then he began to think about something else, and ceased to look at her. About the middle of the day, she ventured to say to him:

“That’s another lodge discovered; I should think you’ll keep quiet for some time now.”

“Very quiet,” Missirilli answered, with a smile that made her shudder.

She went to make a necessary visit to the village priest of San Nicolo, perhaps a spy of the Jesuits. On returning for dinner at seven o’clock, she found the little room where her lover was hidden deserted. Beside herself, she ran all through the house seeking for him; he was not there. In despair she returned to the little room; only then did she catch sight of a note; she read:

“I am going to surrender myself to the legate; I despair of our cause; Heaven is against us. Who has betrayed us? Apparently the wretch who threw himself into the well. Since my life is useless to poor Italy, I do not wish that my comrades, seeing that I alone have not been arrested, should imagine that I have sold them. Adieu; if you love me, think on how to avenge me. Ruin, annihilate, the infamous wretch that has betrayed us, even though he be my father.”

Vanina fell into a chair, half-fainting and plunged in the most cruel unhappiness. She was unable to utter a word; her eyes were dry and burning.

At last she flung herself on her knees.

“Great God! accept my vow,” she exclaimed; “yes, I will punish the infamous wretch who has been a traitor; but Pietro must first be restored to liberty.”

An hour later she was on her way to Rome. Her father had long been urging her to return. During her absence, he had arranged her marriage with Prince Livio Savelli. Vanina had scarcely arrived when he mentioned it to her, trembling. To his great astonishment, she consented at the first word. That same evening, at Countess Vitteleschi’s house, her father presented Don Livio almost officially to her; she talked a great deal with him. He was a most elegant young man, and kept the finest possible horses; but, though he was admitted to be clever, his character was supposed to be so light that he was not an object of suspicion to the government. Vanina thought that by first turning his head she would make a convenient agent of him. Since he was nephew to Monsignore Savelli-Catanzara, governor of Rome and minister of police, she supposed that the spies would not presume to follow him.

After having treated the amiable Don Livio exceedingly well for some days, Vanina announced to him that he would never be her husband; he was, according to her, empty-headed.

“If you were not a child,” she told him, “your uncle’s clerks would have no secrets from you. For example, what has been decided about the carbonari who were discovered recently at Forli?”

Two days later Don Livio came to tell her that all the carbonari taken at Forli had made their escape. She fastened her great black eyes upon him with the bitter smile of most profound contempt, and did not deign to speak to him all that evening. The next day but one Don Livio came to acknowledge to her with a blush that he had been deceived the first time.

“But,” he said, “I have got the key to my uncle’s study; I have seen from the papers that I found there that a Congregation (or Commission) composed of some of the leading cardinals and prelates is meeting in the strictest secrecy and discussing whether these carbonari should be tried at Ravenna or at Rome. The nine carbonari taken at Forli and their head, one Missirilli, who has been foolish enough to surrender himself, are at the present moment confined in the castle of San Leo.[19]

At the word “foolish,” Vanina pinched the prince with all her might.

“I want,” she said, “to see the official papers myself, and go into your uncle’s study with you; you have most likely read them wrong.”

At these words Don Livio shuddered; Vanina was demanding a thing almost impossible; but the young woman’s strange genius redoubled his love. A day or two later Vanina, disguised as a man and wearing a pretty little coat of the Savelli livery, was able to spend half an hour amidst the police minister’s most secret papers. She felt a thrill of the keenest delight when she discovered the daily report on “Pietro Missirilli, prisoner awaiting trial.” Her hands trembled as she held the paper. As she read that name she was on the point of being overcome. When they went out from the governor of Rome’s palace Vanina permitted Don Livio to embrace her.

“You are coming well out of the tests to which I am submitting you,” she said.

After a speech like that the young prince would have set fire to the Vatican to please Vanina. That evening there was a ball at the French ambassador’s; she danced a great deal, and almost always with Don Livio. He was intoxicated with happiness; she must not allow him to reflect.

“My father is sometimes strange,” Vanina said to him one day. “This morning he dismissed two of his servants, who came to tell me their sorrows. One of them has asked a place with your uncle, the governor of Rome; the other, who has been an artilleryman with the French, would like to be employed in the castle of Sant’ Angelo.”

“I’ll take them both into my service,” said the young prince briskly.

“Is that what I asked you?” Vanina replied proudly. “I repeated those poor fellows’ petitions word for word; they ought to get what they asked, and not something else.”

There was nothing more difficult. Monsignore Catanzara was anything but an imprudent man, and only admitted servants into his house who were well known to him. In the midst of a life apparently full of all manner of pleasures, Vanina, tormented by remorse, was very unhappy. The slowness of events was killing her. Her father’s man of business had procured money for her. Ought she to flee from her father’s house and go to Romagna, and attempt to get her lover out of prison? Senseless as this notion was she was on the point of carrying it into execution when chance took pity on her.

Don Livio said to her:

“The ten carbonari of Missirilli’s lodge are going to be transferred to Rome on the understanding that they are to be executed in Romagna after they have been condemned. That is what my uncle has got the Pope to sanction this evening. You and I are the only persons in Rome who know this secret. Are you satisfied!”

“You are becoming a man,” Vanina replied; “make me a present of your portrait.”

The day before Missirilli was due to arrive at Rome Vanina found a pretext for going to Città-Castellana. The prison of that town is where the carbonari spend the night when they are transferred from Romagna to Rome. She saw Missirilli in the morning as he came out of prison. He was chained by himself to a cart; he seemed to her to be pale, but by no means downhearted. An old woman threw a bunch of violets to him; Missirilli smiled her his thanks.

Vanina had seen her lover; all her thoughts seemed renewed; she had fresh courage. A long time ago she had procured a good preferment to the Abbate Cari, the chaplain of the castle of Sant’ Angelo, in which her lover was to be confined; she had made this good priest her confessor. At Rome it is no small thing to be confessor of a princess who is niece to the governor.

The trial of the Forli carbonari did not last long. In revenge for their arrival in Rome, which it had been unable to prevent, the extreme party so contrived that the commission which was to try them was composed of the most ambitious prelates. This commission was presided over by the minister of police.

The law against carbonari is clear; those from Forli could cherish no hope; none the less they defended their lives by every possible subterfuge. Not only did their judges condemn them to death, but several declared for atrocious tortures, that their hands should be cut off, and such like. The minister of police, whose fortune was made (for no one leaves that position except to take a red hat), had no use for cut-off hands: when he referred the sentence to the Pope he had the punishment of all the condemned men commuted to several years’ imprisonment. Pietro Missirilli alone was excepted. The minister regarded that young man as a dangerous fanatic, and besides he had already been condemned to death as guilty of the murder of the two carabineers already mentioned. Vanina knew about the sentence and its commutation a few minutes after the minister had returned from his audience of the Pope.

Next day Monsignore Catanzara returned to his palace about midnight and found no sign of his valet in his room; the minister, astonished, rang several times; at last an old, imbecile servant appeared: the minister, out of all patience, decided to undress unaided. He locked his door; it was very warm; he took his gown and threw it in a heap on a chair. The gown, thrown too hard, went over the chair and struck the muslin curtain at the window, and showed the form of a man. The minister quickly rushed to his bed and seized a pistol. As he was returning to the window a very young man, in his livery, came towards him pistol in hand. At this sight the minister raised his pistol and took aim; he was about to fire; the young man said to him, laughing:

“What, Monsignore, do you not recognize Vanina Vanini?”

“What is the meaning of this unseemly pleasantry?” the Minister retorted angrily.

“Let us discuss things coolly,” said the young woman. “To begin with, your pistol is not loaded.”

The Minister, astonished, satisfied himself that such was the case; after which he drew a dagger from his vest-pocket.[20]

Vanina said to him, with a charming little air of authority:

“Let us be seated, Monsignore.”

And she calmly took her place on a sofa.

“Are you alone, though?” the Minister said.

“Absolutely alone, I swear!” exclaimed Vanina.

The Minister was careful to verify this: he went round the room and looked everywhere; after which he sat down on a chair three paces from Vanina.

“What interest should I have,” said Vanina in a gentle and reasonable tone, “in attempting the life of a moderate man, who would probably be succeeded by some weak, hot-headed person that would be capable of undoing himself and others besides.”

“What do you want, pray, madam?” the minister said somewhat testily. “This scene is not to my taste, and must cease.”

“What I am about to add,” Vanina replied haughtily, suddenly forgetting her gracious air, “concerns you more than me. There is a desire that the life of the carbonaro Missirilli should be spared: if he is executed, you will not survive him a week. I have no interest in all this; the folly which you deplore I did to amuse myself in the first place, and next, to oblige a lady who is one of my friends. I wished,” Vanina continued, resuming her affability, “I wished to render a service to an accomplished man, who soon will be my uncle, and, from all appearance, should carry the fortunes of his house to a great pitch.”

The minister cast aside his vexed air: Vanina’s beauty no doubt contributed to this rapid change. Monsignore Catanzara’s taste for pretty women was well known in Rome, and in her disguise of a footman of the house of Savelli, with well-fitting silk stockings, a red vest, her little sky-blue coat laced with silver, and the pistol in her hand, Vanina was ravishing.

“My future niece,” said the minister, almost laughing, “you are committing a great folly, and it will not be your last.”

“I hope that so discreet a person as you will keep my secret, especially from Don Livio; and, to make sure of your promise, my dear uncle, if you grant me the life of my friend’s protégé, I’ll give you a kiss.”

Thus continuing the conversation in that half-jocular tone in which Roman ladies know how to discuss the most important affairs, Vanina contrived to give this interview, which she had begun pistol in hand, the air of a visit paid by the young princess Savelli to her uncle the governor of Rome.

Soon Monsignore Catanzara, although rejecting with scorn the notion of being influenced by fear, went so far as to explain to his niece all the difficulties that he would encounter in saving Missirilli’s life. As he discussed them, the minister walked up and down the room with Vanina; he took up a carafe of lemonade that was on the chimney-piece, and poured some into a crystal glass. When he was on the point of putting it to his lips, Vanina secured it, and, after holding it some time, let it fall into the garden, as if by carelessness. A moment later, the minister took a chocolate pastille out of a sweetmeat-box. Vanina snatched it from him, and said, laughing as she did so:

“Do take care; everything in the house is poisoned, for they intended your death. It is I who have obtained the respite of my future uncle, so as not to enter the family of Savelli absolutely empty-handed.”

Monsignore Catanzara, greatly astonished, thanked his niece, and gave her great hopes of Missirilli’s life.

“Our bargain is settled,” exclaimed Vanina, “and in proof of it, here is your reward,” she said, embracing him.

The minister took his reward.

“I must own, my dear Vanina,” he added, “that I am not fond of blood. Besides, I am still young, though I perhaps look very old to you; and I may live to see the day when blood shed now will leave a stain.”

Two o’clock was striking when Monsignore Catanzara escorted Vanina to the private gate of his garden.

The day after next, when the minister appeared before the Pope, not a little anxious about the course that he had to pursue, His Holiness said to him:

“Before we go any further, I have a favour to ask you. There is one of those carbonari from Forli, who is still under sentence of death; the thought keeps me from sleeping: the man must be saved.”

The minister, seeing that the Pope had made up his mind, made many objections, and ended by writing a decree, or motu proprio, which the Pope signed, contrary to custom.

It had occurred to Vanina that she might perhaps obtain her lover’s pardon, but that they would try to poison him. The previous evening, Missirilli had received some small parcels of ship-biscuit from Abbate Cari, her confessor, with a warning not to touch the food provided by the State.

Vanina, having afterwards learned that the Forli carbonari were to be transferred to the castle of San Leo, wished to try to see Missirilli at Città-Castellana on his way; she arrived in that town twenty-four hours in advance of the prisoners; there she found Abbate Cari, who had preceded her by some days. He had got the jailor’s leave for Missirilli to hear Mass at midnight in the prison chapel. He had obtained even more: if Missirilli would allow his arms and legs to be fastened with a chain, the jailor would withdraw to the door of the chapel, so that he could always see the prisoner, for whom he was responsible, but could not hear what he said.

The day which was to decide Vanina’s destiny dawned at last. Early in the morning she shut herself up in the prison chapel. Who could tell the thoughts which agitated her during that long day? Did Missirilli love her sufficiently to pardon her? She had denounced his lodge, but she had saved his life. When reason regained command of that tortured soul, Vanina hoped that he would consent to leave Italy in her company; if she had sinned, it was through excess of love. As four o’clock struck, she heard the tread of the carabineers’ horses on the pavement in the distance. Each tread seemed to ring in her heart. Soon she made out the rumbling of the carts which conveyed the prisoners. They halted in the little square in front of the prison; she saw two carabineers lift out Missirilli, who was alone on a cart and so heavily loaded with irons that he could not move. “At least he is alive,” she said to herself with tears in her eyes; “they have not poisoned him.” The evening was cruel; the altar-lamp, which was hung high up, and which the jailor stinted of oil, was the only light in the gloomy chapel. Vanina’s eyes wandered over the tombs of some great lords of the Middle Ages who had died in the neighbouring prison. Their statues looked ferocious.

All sounds had long ago ceased; Vanina was absorbed in her black thoughts. Shortly after midnight struck, she thought she heard a slight noise like the flutter of a bat. She tried to walk, and fell half-fainting on the altar-rail. At the same instant, two phantoms stood beside her, without her having heard them come. They were the jailor and Missirilli, so loaded with chains that he was almost swathed in them. The jailor opened a lantern, which he placed on the altar-rail, beside Vanina, in such a position that he could see his prisoner clearly. Then he withdrew into the background, near the door. Scarcely had the jailor removed, when Vanina flung herself on Missirilli’s neck. As she clasped him in her arms, she felt nothing but his cold, sharp chains. “Who put these chains on him?” she thought. She felt no pleasure in embracing her lover. To this pain succeeded another more piercing: she believed, for a moment, that Missirilli knew of her crime, his reception of her was so chilly.

“Dear friend,” he said to her at last, “I regret the love which you have conceived for me; though I search, I cannot discover the merit that might have inspired it. Let us return, I entreat you, to more Christian feelings, let us forget the illusions which once led us astray; I cannot be yours. The continual misfortune that has dogged my enterprises proceeds, perhaps, from the state of mortal sin in which I have always lived. Even listening to the counsels of human prudence, why was I not arrested with my friends on that fatal night at Forli? Why was I not found at my post at the moment of danger? Why was it that my absence could authorize the most cruel suspicions?—Because I had another passion than the liberation of Italy.”

Vanina could not recover from the surprise that she felt at the change in Missirilli. Though he did not appear to have grown thinner, he looked like thirty. Vanina attributed this change to the bad treatment that he had suffered in prison; she burst into tears.

“Ah,” she said to him, “the jailors promised so faithfully that they would treat you kindly!”

The fact was that, at the approach of death, all the religious principles that were consistent with his passion for the liberation of Italy had revived in the young carbonaro’s heart. Little by little Vanina perceived that the astonishing change which she noticed in her lover was entirely moral, and in no wise the result of physical ill-treatment. Her grief, which she had thought at its height, was augmented by this discovery.

Missirilli ceased speaking; Vanina seemed on the point of being suffocated by her sobs. He added, with some emotion:

“If I loved anything on earth, it would be you, Vanina; but thanks to God I have only one object left me in life; I will die in prison, or in the endeavour to restore liberty to Italy.”

There was another silence; evidently Vanina was unable to speak: she tried to do so, in vain. Missirilli added:

“Duty is cruel, my friend; but, if there were no pain in accomplishing it, where would heroism be? Give me your word that you will not try to see me again.”

As well as his close-bound chain allowed him, he made a little motion with his wrist and stretched out his fingers to Vanina.

“If you will let a man who was dear to you advise you, be sensible and marry the deserving man whom your father intends for you. Do not make any awkward confidence to him; but on the other hand do not ever try to see me again; let us be strangers to each other in future. You have advanced a considerable sum for the service of your country; if ever it is delivered from its tyrants, that sum will be repaid to you in national funds.”

Vanina was overwhelmed. While he spoke to her, Pietro’s eye had never once flashed, except when he uttered the word “country.”

At last pride came to the rescue of the young princess; she had provided herself with diamonds and small files. Without a word of reply, she offered them to Missirilli. “I accept them out of duty,” he said, “for I must try to escape; but I will never see you again; I swear it in presence of your new benefits. Adieu, Vanina; promise me that you will never write to me, never try to see me; leave all of me to my country, I am dead to you: farewell.”

“No!” Vanina replied furiously, “I wish you to know what I have done, led by the love I had for you.”

With that she told him all her proceedings from the moment that Missirilli quitted the castle of San Nicolo to surrender himself to the legate. When the recital was ended, Vanina said:

“All that is nothing; I did more for love of you.”

And she told him of her treason.

“Ah, monster!” exclaimed Pietro in a rage, hurling himself upon her, and he tried to fell her with his chains.

He would have succeeded in doing so, but for the jailor, who ran forward at his first cries. He seized Missirilli.

“Here, monster! I won’t be indebted to you for anything,” said Missirilli to Vanina, flinging the files and diamonds at her as well as his chains permitted; and he hastened away.

Vanina remained utterly crushed. She returned to Rome, and the newspapers announce that she has just married Prince Don Livio Savelli.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] “Librar l’Italia de’ barbari,” a saying of Petrarch’s in 1350, afterwards repeated by Julius II., by Machiavelli, and by Count Alfieri.

[19] Near Rimini in Romagna. It was in this castle that the famous Cagliostro perished; it is said in the district that he was suffocated there.

[20] A Roman prelate would no doubt not be fit to command an army corps bravely, as was more than once done by a general of division who was minister of police at Paris at the time of Mallet’s attempt; but he never would have let himself be held up in his own house so easily. He would have been too much afraid of being quizzed by his colleagues. A Roman who knows that he is hated does not go about without being well armed.

The writer has not thought it necessary to justify some other little differences between the ways of doing and speaking at Paris and those at Rome. So far from toning down these differences, he has thought it right to state them boldly. The Romans whom he describes have not the honour of being Frenchmen.

THE CHILD WITH THE BREAD SHOES
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

Listen to this story which the grandmothers of Germany tell their grandchildren,—Germany, a beautiful country of legends and dreams, where the moonlight, playing on the mists of Old Rhine, creates a thousand fantastic visions.

At the end of the village a poor woman lived alone in a humble cottage: the house was very poor and contained but the barest necessities in the way of furniture.

An old bed with twisted columns whence hung serge curtains yellow with age; a bread-bin; a walnut chest, polished till it shone, but the numerous worm-eaten holes of which were stopped with wax, indicated a long period of service; an arm-chair, covered with tapestry from which the colours had faded and which had been worn thin by the shaking head of the old grandmother; a spinning-wheel polished with use: that was all.

We were about to forget a child’s cradle, quite new, very cosily padded and covered with a pretty flowered counterpane stitched by an indefatigable needle, that of a mother ornamenting the crib of her little Jesus.

All the wealth in the little house was centred there.

The child of a burgomaster or of an aulic councillor could not have been more softly couched. Sacred prodigality, sweet folly of the mother who deprives herself of everything to provide a little luxury, in the midst of her poverty, for her dear nursling!

The cradle gave a festal air to the poor hovel; nature, which is compassionate to the unfortunate, made the bareness of this white-washed cottage gay with tufts of houseleek and velvet moss. Kind plants, full of pity, although they looked like parasites, filled up the holes in the roof and made it as dazzling as a bride’s jewels, and prevented the rain from falling on the cradle; the pigeons alighted on the window and cooed until the child fell asleep.

A little bird, to which young Hans had given a crumb of bread in the winter, when the snow made the ground white, had, when spring came, let a grain fall from his beak at the foot of the wall, and thence had sprung a beautiful bindweed which, clinging to the stones with its green claws, had entered the room by a broken window-pane, and crowned the child’s cradle with its cluster, so that in the morning Hans’s blue eyes and the blue bells of the bindweed woke up at the same time, and looked at each other with an understanding air.

This home, then, was poor but not gloomy.

Hans’s mother, whose husband had died far away at the war, lived as best she could on vegetables from the garden, and the product of her spinning-wheel: very little, it is true, but Hans wanted for nothing and that was enough.

Hans’s mother was a truly pious and believing woman. She prayed, worked and practised virtue; but she had one fault: she looked upon herself with too much complacence and prided herself too much on her son.

It sometimes happens that mothers, seeing these beautiful rosy children, with dimpled hands, white skin and pink heels, think that they belong to them for ever.

But God gives nothing; he only lends, and, like a forgotten creditor, he sometimes comes to demand his own again all of a sudden.

Because this fresh bud had sprung from her stem, Hans’s mother believed that she had made him to be born: and God, who, from within his Paradise with its azure vaults starred with gold, watches everything that happens on earth, and hears from the ends of the infinite the sound that the blade of grass makes as it grows, was not pleased to see this.

He also saw that Hans was greedy and that his mother was too indulgent to this greediness; the naughty child often cried when he had, after grapes or an apple, to eat bread, object of envy to so many unfortunates, and his mother let him throw away the piece of bread he had commenced, or else finished it herself.

Now it happened that Hans fell ill: fever burned him, his breath whistled in his choking throat; he had croup, a terrible illness that has made the eyes of many mothers and fathers red.

At the sight the poor woman was filled with horrible anguish.

You have doubtless seen in some church the image of Our Lady, clothed in mourning and standing under the Cross, with her breast open and her bleeding heart, where lie plunged seven swords of silver, three on one side, four on the other. That means that there is no agony more terrible than that of a mother who sees her child dying.

And yet the Holy Virgin believed in the divinity of Jesus and knew that her son would come to life again.

Now Hans’s mother had not that hope.

During the last days of Hans’s illness his mother, even while watching him, continued to spin mechanically and the whirring of the wheel mingled with the rattle in the throat of the dying child.

If some rich people find it strange that a mother can spin by the bed-side of a dying child, it is because they do not understand what tortures poverty contains for the soul; alas! it does not only break the body, it also breaks the heart.

What she was spinning thus, was the thread for her little Hans’s shroud; she did not wish that any cloth that had been used should cover that dear body, and, as she had no money, she made her spinning-wheel hum with a mournful activity; but she did not pass the thread through her lips as was her custom: enough tears fell from her eyes to moisten it.

At the end of the sixth day, Hans expired. Whether from chance or from sympathy, the cluster of bindweed that caressed his cradle faded, dried up and let its last curled-up flower fall on the bed.

When the mother was quite convinced that the breath had for ever flown from his lips, on which the violets of death had replaced the roses of life, she covered the too dear head with the edge of the sheet, took her bundle of thread under her arm, and made her way towards the weaver’s house.

“Weaver,” she said to him, “here is some very fine thread, very regular and without knots; the spider does not spin any finer between the joists of the ceiling; let your shuttle come and go; from this thread I must have an ell of cloth as soft as the cloth of Friesland or Holland.”

The weaver took the skein, set the warp, and the busy shuttle, drawing the thread after it, began to run hither and thither.

The card strengthened the woof and the thread continued to grow evenly, and without breaking, on the loom; it was as fine as the shift of an archduchess or the linen with which the priest dries the communion-cup at the altar.

When all the thread was used, the weaver gave the cloth to the poor mother, and, as he had understood everything from the settled look of despair on the unhappy woman’s face, he said to her:

“The emperor’s son, who died last year while still an infant, was not wrapped in a finer or softer shroud in his little ebony coffin with silver nails.”

Having folded the cloth, the mother drew from her wasted finger a thin gold ring, all worn with use.

“Good weaver,” she said, “take this ring, my wedding-ring, the only gold I ever possessed.”

The kind weaver-man did not wish to take it; but she said to him:

“Where I am going I shall have no need of a ring; for I feel my Hans’s small arms pulling me into the ground.”

Then she went to the carpenter and said to him:

“Master, get me some oak from the heart of the tree, which will not rot and which the worms will not be able to eat; cut from it five boards and two little boards and make a coffin to these measurements.”

The carpenter took his saw and plane, trimmed the planks, and struck the nails as lightly as possible with his hammer, so as not to let the iron points enter farther into the poor woman’s heart than into the wood.

When the work was finished, it was so carefully and so well done that it might have been taken for a box to put jewels and laces in.

“Carpenter, as you have made so beautiful a coffin for my little Hans, I give you my house at the end of the village, and the little garden behind it, and the well with the vineyard.—You shall not wait long.”

With the shroud and the coffin, which she held under her arm, it was so small, she went through the village streets, and the children, who do not know what death is, said:

“Look at Hans’s mother taking him a beautiful box of toys from Nuremberg; it must be a town with its painted and varnished wooden houses, its steeple covered with tin-foil, its belfry and its tower with battlements, and its trees in the promenades, all curly and green; or else a beautiful violin with its sculptured pegs at the neck and its horsehair bow.—Oh, why have we not a box like it!”

And the mothers, growing pale, kissed them and told them to be quiet:

“Silly children that you are, you must not say that; do not wish for the box of toys, or the violin-case that one carries with tears under one’s arm: you will have it soon enough, poor little ones!”

When Hans’s mother got home, she took the dainty, still pretty, corpse of her son and began to make his last toilet—it must be made carefully, for it has to last for eternity.

She clothed him in his Sunday clothes, his silk dress and fur pelisse, so that he should not be cold in the damp place to which he was going. Beside him she put the doll with the enamel eyes, the doll he loved so much that he always took it to bed with him.

But, just as she was turning down the shroud on the body which she had kissed for the last time a thousand times, she saw that she had forgotten to place his pretty little red slippers on the child’s feet.

She looked for them in the room, for it hurt her to see the little feet bare that used to be so warm and pink, and were now so cold and white; but during her absence the rats had found the shoes under the bed, and for want of better food had nibbled them, gnawed at them, and cut holes in the leather.

It was a great grief to the poor mother that Hans should go away into the other world with bare feet; when the heart is all one wound, it only needs a touch to make it bleed.

She cried to see the slippers: from that inflamed, worn-out eye a tear could still gush.

How could she get shoes for Hans, when she had already given her ring and her house? That was the thought that troubled her. By dint of thinking she had an idea.

In the bread-bin there was still a whole loaf of bread, as, for a long time, the unhappy woman, kept alive by her sorrow, had been eating nothing.

She broke the loaf, remembering that, in the past, she had often made with the soft parts pigeons, geese, chickens, wooden shoes, boats, and other boys’ things to amuse Hans.

Placing the bread in the hollow of her hand, and kneading it with her thumb while she moistened it with her tears, she made a little pair of bread shoes, with which she covered the cold, bluish feet of the dead child, and, her heart consoled, she turned down the shroud and closed the coffin.—While she was kneading the bread, a poor man had come to the door and timidly asked for some bread; but she had signed to him with her hand to go away.

The grave-digger came to take away the box, and buried it in a corner of the cemetery under a clump of white rose-bushes: the air was warm, it was not raining and the ground was not wet; this was a comfort to the mother, who thought that her poor little Hans would not pass the first night in his tomb too uncomfortably.

When she returned home to her solitary house, she placed Hans’s cradle beside her bed, lay down and fell asleep.

Overtaxed nature succumbed.

As she slept, she had a dream or, at least, she believed it was a dream.

Hans appeared to her, clothed, as he was in his coffin, in his Sunday dress and his pelisse lined with swans’-down, in his hand his doll with the enamel eyes and on his feet his bread shoes.

He seemed to be sad.

He had not the halo that death ought to give to the little innocents; for, if a child is placed in the ground, it comes out an angel.

The roses of Paradise were not flourishing on his pale cheeks, coloured white by death; tears fell from his blond eyelashes, and great sighs swelled his little breast.

The vision disappeared, and the mother awoke, bathed in perspiration, delighted at having seen her child, terrified at having seen him so sad; but she reassured herself by saying, “Poor Hans! even in Paradise he cannot forget me.”

The following night, the apparition was repeated: Hans was still more sad and more pale.

His mother, stretching her arms out to him, said:

“Dear child, take comfort, and do not weary in Heaven; I shall soon rejoin you.”

The third night, Hans came again; he moaned and cried more than at the other times, and he disappeared with his little hands joined; he no longer had his doll, but he still had his bread shoes.

His mother, being uneasy, went to consult a venerable priest, who said to her:

“I will watch beside you to-night, and I will question the little ghost; he will answer me; I know what words to say to innocent or guilty spirits.”

Hans appeared at the usual hour, and the priest summoned him, in the consecrated words, to tell him what troubled him in the other world.

“It is the bread shoes which torment me, and hinder me from mounting the diamond staircase of Paradise; they are heavier on my feet than postilion’s boots and I cannot get past the first two or three steps, and that troubles me greatly, for I see above a cloud of beautiful cherubim with rosy wings who are calling to me to play with them and are showing me toys of silver and gold.”

Having said these words, he disappeared.

The good priest, to whom Hans’s mother had made her confession, said to her:

“You have committed a grave fault, you have profaned the daily bread, the sacred bread, our good God’s bread, the bread that Jesus Christ, at his last repast, chose to represent his body, and, after having refused a slice of it to the poor man who came to your door, you kneaded from it slippers for your Hans.

“You must open the coffin, take the bread shoes off the child’s feet, and burn them in the all-purifying fire.”

Accompanied by the grave-digger and the mother, the priest proceeded to the cemetery: with four blows of the spade the coffin was laid bare, and was opened.

Hans was lying inside, just as his mother had laid him there, but his face bore an expression of pain.

The holy priest gently removed the bread shoes from the dead child’s feet and burned them himself at the flames of a candle, reciting a prayer the while.

When night came, Hans appeared to his mother one last time, but he was gay, rosy and happy, and had with him two little cherubim with whom he had already made friends; he had wings of light and a fillet of diamonds.

“Oh, mother, what joy, what happiness, and oh, how beautiful are the gardens of Paradise! We play there all the time and our good God never scolds.”

Next day, the mother saw her son again, not on earth, but in heaven; for she died during the day, her brow pressed against the empty cradle.

THE REVEREND FATHER GAUCHER’S ELIXIR
ALPHONSE DAUDET

“Drink this, neighbour, and tell me what you think of it.”

And drop by drop, with the scrupulous care of a lapidary counting pearls, the curé of Graveson poured me out two fingers of a golden-green liquor, warm, shimmering, exquisite.... It warmed my stomach like sunshine.

“That is Father Gaucher’s elixir, the pride and the health of our Provence,” the good man informed me triumphantly. “It is made at the Premonstratensian convent, a couple of leagues from your mill.... Isn’t it worth all their Chartreuses?... And if you only knew how amusing the story of this elixir is! Just listen....”

Thereupon quite innocently, thinking no evil, in the Presbytery dining-room so simple and quiet with its little pictures of the Stations of the Cross and its pretty white starched curtains like surplices, the abbé began to tell me a tale just a little sceptical and irreverent, after the manner of a story from Erasmus or D’Assoucy.

---

“Twenty years ago the Premonstratensians, or rather the White Fathers, as our Provençals call them, had fallen into great poverty. If you had seen their house in those days, it would have made your heart ache.

“The great wall and St. Pachomius’ tower were falling into pieces. Around the weed-grown cloisters the columns were splitting, the stone saints were crumbling in their niches. Not a window was whole, not a door held fast. In the garths and chapels the Rhone wind blew as it does in the Camargue, extinguishing the candles, breaking the lead of the windows, and driving the holy water out of the stoups. But saddest of all was the convent steeple as silent as a deserted dove-cote, and the fathers, for want of means to buy themselves a bell, forced to ring to matins with clappers of almond-wood!...

“Poor White Fathers! I can see them yet, at a Corpus Christi procession, filing sadly past in their patched mantles, pale, thin from their diet of pumpkins and melons, and behind them his lordship the abbot, who hung down his head as he went, ashamed at letting the sun see his crosier with the gilding worn off and his white woollen mitre all moth-eaten. The ladies of the confraternity wept in their ranks for pity at the sight, and the big banner-carriers grinned and whispered to each other, as they pointed at the poor monks:

“‛Starlings go thin when they go in a flock!’

“The fact is that the unfortunate White Fathers were themselves reduced to debating whether they would not be better to take their flight across the world and seek fresh pasture each one where he could.

“So then, one day when this grave question was being discussed in the chapter, a message was brought to the prior that Brother Gaucher asked to be heard before the council.... You must understand that this Brother Gaucher was the convent cowherd; that is to say, he spent his days in wandering from arch to arch of the cloisters, driving two scraggy cows, which sought for grass in the crevices of the pavement. Brought up until his twelfth year by an old half-witted woman in Les Baux, called Auntie Bégon, and then taken in by the monks, the unfortunate cowherd had never been able to learn anything except to drive his beasts and to repeat his paternoster, and even that he said in Provençal; for he had a thick skull, and his wits were about as sharp as a leaden dagger. A fervent Christian, for all that, though somewhat visionary, quite comfortable in his sackcloth, and disciplining himself with strong conviction and such arms!...

“When they saw him enter the chapter-house, simple and clownish, and salute the assembly with a scrape, prior, canons, treasurer, and every one burst out laughing. That was always the effect produced everywhere that his honest, grizzled face appeared, with its goatee and its somewhat vacuous eyes; so Brother Gaucher was not put about.

“‛Your Reverences,’ he said in a good-natured tone, twisting at his olive-stone beads, ‛it’s a true saying that empty barrels make the most sound. What do you think? By putting my poor brains to steep, though they’re soft enough already, I do believe I’ve found the way to get us all out of our difficulties.

“‛It’s this way. You know Auntie Bégon, the good woman who took care of me when I was little—God rest her soul, the old sinner! She used to sing some queer songs when she had drink—Well, what I want to tell you, my reverend fathers, is that when Auntie Bégon was alive she knew the herbs that grow in the mountains as well and better than any old hag in Corsica. And, by the same token, in her latter days she compounded an incomparable elixir by blending five or six sorts of simples, which we used to go and gather together in the Alpilles. That’s many a year ago; but I think that with the aid of Saint Augustine, and the permission of our father abbot, I might—if I search carefully—recall the composition of that mysterious elixir. Then we should only have to put it into bottles and sell it a little dear, and the community would be able to get rich at its ease, like our brethren at La Trappe and the Grande....’

“He had not time to finish. The prior got up and fell on his neck. The canons took him by the hands. The treasurer, even more deeply moved than any of the others, respectfully kissed the frayed hem of his cowl.... Then each returned to his stall to deliberate; and in solemn assembly the chapter decided to entrust the cows to Brother Thrasybulus, in order that Brother Gaucher might devote himself entirely to the preparation of his elixir.

---

“How did the good brother manage to recall Auntie Bégon’s recipe? What efforts, what vigils did it cost him? History does not relate. But this much is certain, at the end of six months the White Fathers’ elixir was very popular already. In all the Comtat, in all the Arles district not a mas, not a farm-house but had at the backdoor of its spence, among the bottles of wine syrup and jars of olives picholines, a little brown stone flagon sealed with the arms of Provence, with a monk in ecstasy on a silver label. Thanks to the vogue of its elixir the house of the Premonstratensians got rich very rapidly. St Pachomius’ tower was rebuilt. The prior got a new mitre, the church grand new painted windows; and in the fine tracery of the steeple a whole flight of bells, big and little, alighted one fine Easter morning, chiming and pealing in full swing.

“As for Brother Gaucher, the poor lay brother whose rusticities used to amuse the chapter so, he was never mentioned now in the convent. They only knew the Reverend Father Gaucher, a man of brains and ability, who lived quite isolated from the petty, multifarious occupations of the cloister, and shut himself up all day in his distillery, while thirty monks scoured the mountains in search of his fragrant herbs.... This distillery, to which no one, not even the prior, had the right of entry, was an old abandoned chapel at the bottom of the canons’ garden. The good fathers’ simplicity had made it into a very mysterious and formidable place; and any bold and inquisitive monk who managed to reach the rose-window above the door by scrambling up the climbing vines promptly tumbled down, terrified at his peep of Father Gaucher with his necromancer’s beard, stooping over his furnaces, hydrometer in hand; and all around him red stone retorts, gigantic alembics, glass worms, a regular weird litter that glowed as if enchanted in the red gleam of the windows....

“At close of day, when the last stroke of the Angelus sounded, the door of this place of mystery was opened discreetly, and his Reverence betook himself to the church for the evening office. You should have seen the reception that he got as he traversed the monastery! The brethren lined up as he passed. They said:

“‛Hush!... He has the secret!...’

“The treasurer walked behind him and spoke to him, bowing deferentially.... Amid these adulations the Father went his way, wiping his brow, his three-cornered hat with its broad brim on the back of his head like an aureole, looking complacently about him at the wide courts planted with orange-trees, the blue roofs where new vanes were turning, and in the dazzling white cloister, amid the neat flower columns, the canons all newly rigged out, walking two and two with contented faces.

“‛They owe all that to me!’ his Reverence said inwardly; and, as often as he did so, the thought made his pride rise in gusts.

“The poor man was heavily punished for it. You’ll hear how that happened....

---

“You must understand that one evening, whilst the office was being sung, he arrived at the church in an extraordinary state of agitation: red, breathless, his cowl awry, and so upset that in taking holy water he dipped his sleeves into it up to the elbows. At first they thought that it was excitement at being late; but when they saw him make profound reverences to the organ and the galleries instead of saluting the high altar, rush across the church like a whirlwind, wander about in the choir for five minutes in search of his stall, then, once he was seated, sway right and left, smiling benignly, a murmur of astonishment ran through the nave and aisles. They chuckled to one another behind their breviaries:

“‛Whatever is the matter with our Father Gaucher?... Whatever is the matter with our Father Gaucher?’

“Twice the prior impatiently let his crosier fall on the pavement to command silence.... Down at the end of the choir the psalms still went on; but the responses lacked animation....

“Suddenly, in the middle of the Ave verum, lo and behold, Father Gaucher flung himself back in his stall, and sang out at the top of his voice:

“‛In Paris there dwells a White Father,
Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban....’

“General consternation. Every one rose. There were cries of:

“‛Take him away!... He’s possessed!’

“The canons crossed themselves. His Lordship flourished his crosier.... But Father Gaucher saw nothing, heard nothing; and two sturdy monks had to drag him out by the side-door of the choir, struggling like a demoniac and going on worse than ever with his ‛patatins’ and ‛tarabans.’

---

“Next morning, at daybreak, the unfortunate man was on his knees in the prior’s oratory, owning his fault with a torrent of tears.

“‛It was the elixir, my lord; it was the elixir that overcame me,’ he said, beating on his breast.

“And seeing him so conscience-smitten, so penitent, the good prior himself was moved.

“‛Come, come, Father Gaucher, set your mind at rest; it will all pass away like dew in the sun.... After all, the scandal has not been so great as you think. To be sure, there was a song that was a little ... hem! hem!... Yet let us hope that the novices would not pick it up.... But now, let us see; tell me frankly how it all happened.... It was when you were trying the elixir, was it not? Perhaps your hand was too heavy?... Yes, yes, I understand.... It is like brother Schwartz, the inventor of gunpowder: you have been the victim of your invention. But tell me, my good friend, is it absolutely necessary for you to try this terrible elixir on yourself?’

“‛Unfortunately it is, my lord! The gauge gives me the strength and the degree of alcohol, it is true; but for the fineness, the velvetiness, I can’t very well trust anything but my tongue!...’

“‛Ah, to be sure!... But listen for another moment to what I am going to say to you.... When you are compelled to taste the elixir thus, does it seem good? Do you derive any pleasure from it?’

“‛Alas, yes, my lord!’ said the unfortunate father, blushing to the roots of his hair. ‛These last two evenings I have found such a bouquet in it, such an aroma!... Surely it must be the Devil that has played me this sorry trick.... And so I have quite decided to use nothing but the gauge in future. If the liquor is not fine enough, if it does not pearl enough, so much the worse....’

“‛For any sake don’t do that,’ the prior interrupted excitedly. ‛We must not run the risk of making our customers dissatisfied.... All you have to do, now that you are forewarned, is to be on your guard.... Let us see, how much do you require to ascertain?... Fifteen or twenty drops, eh?... Let’s say twenty drops.... The Devil will be smart indeed if he catches you with twenty drops.... In any case, to prevent accidents, I’ll dispense you from coming to church in future. You will say the evening office in the distillery.... And, meanwhile, go in peace, reverend father, and, above all things, count your drops carefully.’

“Alas, his poor reverence had much need to count his drops!... The Devil had hold of him, and never afterwards let him go.

“The distillery heard some strange offices!

---

“So long as it was day, all went well. The father was tolerably calm: he prepared his chafing-dishes and alembics, sorted his herbs carefully, all Provence herbs, fine, grey, serrated, hot with perfume and sunshine.... But in the evening, when the simples were infused and the elixir was cooling in great copper basins, the poor man’s martyrdom began.

“‛Seventeen ... eighteen ... nineteen ... twenty!...’

“The drops fell from the stirring-rod into the silver-gilt goblet. The father swallowed the twenty at a gulp, almost without pleasure. What he longed for was the twenty-first. Oh, that twenty-first drop!... Then, to escape temptation, he went and knelt down at the farthest end of the laboratory, and buried himself in his paternosters. But from the still-warm liquor there rose a faint steam charged with aromas, which came stealing about him and sent him back willy-nilly to his basins.... The liquor was a lovely golden green.... Leaning over it with open nostrils, the father stirred it gently with his stirring-rod, and in the little sparkling bubbles that the emerald wave carried round he seemed to see Auntie Bégon’s eyes laughing and twinkling as they looked at him....

“‛Here goes! Another drop!’

“And with one drop and another the unfortunate at last had his goblet full to the brim. Then, completely vanquished, he sank down in a great arm-chair, and lolling at ease, his eyes half shut, tasted his sin sip by sip, saying softly to himself with a delicious remorse:

“‘Ah! I’m damning myself ... damning myself....’

“The most terrible thing was that at the bottom of this diabolical elixir he rediscovered by some black art or other all Auntie Bégon’s naughty songs: ‛There are three little gossips, who talk of making a banquet’ ... or: ‛Master Andrew’s little shepherdess goes off to the wood by her little self,’ and always the famous one about the White Fathers: ‛Patatin, patatan.’

“Imagine his confusion next day when his cell-mates said to him slyly:

“‛Eh, eh, Father Gaucher, you had a bee in your bonnet last night, when you went to bed!’

“Then it was tears, despair and fasting, sackcloth and discipline. But nothing could avail against the demon of the elixir, and every evening at the same hour his possession began anew.

---

“All this time orders were pouring into the abbey in excess of expectation. They came from Nîmes, from Aix, from Avignon, from Marseilles.... Every day the convent became more like a factory. There were packing brothers, labelling brothers, others for the accounts, others for the carting; the service of God may have lost a few tolls of the bells now and again by it; but I can assure you that the poor folk of the district lost nothing....

“Well, then, one fine Sunday morning, whilst the treasurer was reading in full chapter his stock-sheet at the end of the year, and the good canons were listening to him with sparkling eyes and smiles on their lips, who should burst into the middle of the meeting but Father Gaucher, shouting out:

“‛That’s an end of it!... I can’t stand it any longer!... Give me my cows again!’

“‛But what is it, Father Gaucher?’ asked the prior, who had his own suspicions of what it was.

“‛What is it, my lord?... I’m on a fair way of preparing myself a fine eternity of flames and pitch-forks.... I drink, and drink, like a lost soul; that’s what it is!...’

‛But I told you to count your drops.’

‛Ah, so you did! To count my drops! But I would need to count by goblets now.... Yes, your Reverences, that’s what I’ve come to. Three bottles an evening!... You know quite well that can’t go on for ever.... So, get whom you like to make the elixir.... God’s fire burn me, if I take anything more to do with it!’

“There was no more laughing for the chapter.

“‛But, wretched man, you’ll ruin us!’ cried the treasurer, brandishing his ledger.

“‛Would you rather I damned myself?’

“Thereupon the prior stood up.

“‛Reverend sirs,’ he said, stretching out his fine white hand, on which the pastoral ring glistened, ‛it can all be arranged.... It’s at night, is it not, my dear son, that the demon assails you?...’

‛Yes, Sir Prior, regularly every evening.... When I see the night coming on, I get all in a sweat, saving your Reverence’s presence, like Capitou’s ass, when he saw them come with the pack-saddle.’

“‛Well, then, keep your mind easy.... In future, every evening, during the office, we’ll recite on your behalf the Prayer of Saint Augustine, to which plenary indulgence is attached.... With that, you are safe, whatever happens.... It is absolution at the very moment of sin.’

“‘O that is good, thank you, Sir Prior.’

“And, without asking anything more, Father Gaucher returned to his alembics as light as a lark.

“And in fact, from that moment, every evening, at the end of compline, the officiant never failed to say:

“‘Let us pray for our poor Father Gaucher, who is sacrificing his soul in the interests of the community. Oremus, Domine....’

“And, while the prayer ran along all those white cowls prostrated in the shadow of the naves, like a little breeze over snow, away at the other end of the convent, behind the lighted windows of the distillery, Father Gaucher might be heard chanting open-throated:

“‘In Paris there dwells a White Father,
Patatin, patatan, tarabin, taraban;
In Paris there dwells a White Father
Who sets all the little nuns dancing,
Trip, trip, trip, trip in a garden;
Who sets all the....’”

---

At this point the good curé stopped short in horror. “Mercy on us! If my parishioners heard me!”

THE LEGEND OF SAINT JULIAN HOSPITATOR
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT