[CHAPTER II]
The good my flouting at the hands of the two Parisians had done me—The young girls of Villers-Cotterets—My three friends—First love affairs
Still, like François I. after the battle of Pavia, I had not lost everything by my defeat. First there remained to me my boots and my tight-fitting trousers, those two dearly coveted articles, which became the envy and admiration of those young companions upon whom the lovely Laure had so cruelly thrown me. Besides, in the fortnight spent in the company of those two smart girls, I had learnt the first lesson that only the society of women can give. This lesson had taught me to realise the need for that care of my personal appearance which had hitherto never presented itself to my mind as a thing to be daily attended to. Beneath the ridiculous if vanity in changing my mode of dress, underneath the unlucky attempt that I, a poor country lad, had made to attain to the elegant style of a Parisian, there appeared the first dawnings of true elegance—that is to say, of neatness.
I had rather good hands, my nails were well shaped, my teeth were large but white, and my feet were singularly small considering my size. I had been ignorant of all these possessions until they had been pointed out to me by the two Parisian girls, who gave me advice as to how I could enhance the value of my natural gifts. And I continued to follow their advice for my own personal satisfaction, after at first following it to please them, to such purpose that by the time they left I had really stepped across the boundary which separated childhood from youth. The crossing had certainly been a rough one, and I had accomplished it with tears in my eyes, coquetry holding one of my hands and chagrin the other. Then—as jaded travellers, when they enter a fresh country, suck bitter fruits, which, however much they set the teeth on edge, leave behind them an irresistible desire to suck other fruits,—when my lips had touched the apple of Eve that men call love, I yearned to make another attempt, even though it should be more painful than the first, and so far as its young girls were concerned, few towns could boast themselves as well favoured as Villers-Cotterets. Never was there such a large park as ours, not even at Versailles; no lawns were greener, not even those at Brighton; nor were any studded with more exquisite flowers than the park of Villers-Cotterets, with its lawns and flower-beds. Three very distinct classes disputed among themselves for the crown of beauty—the aristocracy, the middle classes, and a third class for which I cannot find a name, a pleasant intermediary between the middle class and the people, which belongs to neither, and to which class the dressmakers, seamstresses, and women-shopkeepers of a town belong.
The first class was represented by the Collard family, to whom I have already alluded in connection with my childhood. Of the three madcap young girls who roamed the forest of Villers-Cotterets as free as the butterflies and swallows, two had become wives: one, Caroline, had married the Baron Capelle; the other, Hermine, had married the Baron de Martens; Louise, the third, who was but fifteen, was the most captivating little maiden imaginable. Their mother—whose birth and history as the daughter of Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orléans I have related—and her three children were the aristocratic centre round which the young men and maidens of the neighbouring castles revolved; and among the former of these were some of the best blood in the country—the Montbretons, the Courvals, and the Mornays. None of these families lived in Villers-Cotterets itself: they lived in the castles around. Only on great occasions did the hives swarm and then we saw these golden-winged bees flying about the streets of the town and down the avenues of the park.
The second class was represented by the Deviolaine family. Two out of the five daughters of M. Deviolaine were married, as I have said—namely, Léontine and Éléonore; three remained, Cécile, Augustine and Louise. Cécile was twenty years of age, Augustine sixteen; Louise was still a mere child. Cécile had preserved her whimsical and capricious spirits, the same mocking and animated features; her actions were more masculine than feminine; her complexion was tanned by the sun, as she never took the trouble to protect herself from its rays. Augustine, on the contrary, had a skin as white as milk, large tranquil blue eyes, dark chestnut hair, forming an admirable framework round her face, sloping shoulders charmingly moulded, and a figure that was not too slender; unlike her sister Cécile, she was gracefully feminine in all her ways. Raphael would have been puzzled to choose between her and Louise Collard for a model for his Madonna, and like the Greek sculptor, he would have selected beautiful points from them both to reach that perfect standard to which Art everywhere attains when it surpasses Nature.
The other young girls of the middle class grouped themselves round the Deviolaine family. The two Troisvallet girls, Henriette and Clementine: Clementine, dark with beautiful black hair, strangely attractive eyes, a Roman complexion, of the type of Velletri or Subiaco, and a head like one of Augustine Carrachi's. Henriette was tall, fair, rosy, slender, gracious, and as pliant in her gentle youthfulness as a rose, as a blade of corn, as a willow tree: she had that type of face which is half sad, half merry; the transition between angel and woman, showing all the common needs of earth, yet full of heavenly aspirations too. Then the two charming girls Sophie and Pélagie Perrot; Louise Moreau, a sweet young girl, who has since become the admirable mother of a family; Éléonore Picot, of whom I have spoken—an excellent woman, saddened by the death of her brother Stanislas, and the shameful charge that had weighed for a short time upon her brother Auguste. Then there were others, too, whose names I have forgotten, but whose fresh faces still appear in my mind's eye like the phantoms of a dream or like the apparitions which glide out of German streams or are reflected in the lochs of Scotland as they pursue their nocturnal rounds.