The town of Aps had voted a statue to Numa, but the Liberals of the “Vanguard” had strongly disapproved of this apotheosis of a living man and so his friends had not dared to go on with it. The statue was all ready, but now probably they would wait for his death before raising it. Surely it’s a glorious thought that after your funeral you will have civic recognition and that you die only to rise again in bronze or marble; but this empty pedestal shining in the sun seemed to Roumestan, whenever he passed it, as gloomy as a majestic family vault; it was not until they had reached the amphitheatre that he could dispel his funereal thoughts.
The old structure, divested of its Sunday cheerfulness and returned to its solemnity of a great and useless ruin, seemed damp and cheerless as it loomed darkly against the rays of the setting sun, with its dark corridors and floors caved in here and there and stones crumbling beneath the footsteps of the centuries.
“How dreadfully sad it is!” said Hortense, regretting the music of Valmajour’s fife; but to Numa it did not seem sad. His happiest days had been passed there—his childish days with all their pleasures and longings. Oh, the Sundays at the bull-fights, prowling around the gates with other poor children who lacked ten sous to pay for their tickets! In the hot afternoon sun they crawled into some corner where a glimpse of the arena could be obtained. What pleasures of forbidden fruits!—the red-stockinged legs of the bull-fighters, the wrathful hoofs of the bull, the dust of the combat rising from the arena amid the cries of “Bravo!” and the bellowings and the roar of the multitude! The yearning to get inside was not to be resisted. While the sentinel’s back was turned the bravest of them would wriggle through the iron bars with a little effort.
“I always got through!” said Roumestan in ecstasy. The history of his whole life was expressed in those few words. By chance or by cleverness—no matter how close were the bars—the Southerner always wriggled through.
“I was thinner in those days, all the same,” he said with a sigh and he looked with comic regret at the narrow bars of the grille and then at his big white waistcoat, within which lay the solid sign of his forty years.
Behind the enormous amphitheatre they found the carriage, safely harbored from wind and sun. They had to wake up Ménicle, who was sleeping peacefully on the box between two large baskets of provisions, wrapped in his heavy cloak of royal blue. But before getting in Numa pointed out to Hortense an old inn at a distance whose sign read: “To the Little St. John, coach and express office,” the whitewashed front and large open sheds of which took up one whole corner of the square. In these sheds were ancient stage-coaches and rural chaises long unused, covered with dust, their shafts raised high in air from beneath their gray covers.
“Look there, little sister,” he cried with emotion. “It was from this spot that I set out for Paris one-and-twenty years ago. There was no railway then; we went by coach as far as Montélimar, then up the Rhône. Heavens, how happy I was! and how your big Paris frightened me! It was evening—I remember it so well....”
He spoke quickly, reminiscences crowding each other in his mind.
“The evening, ten o’clock, in November, beautiful moonlight. The guard’s name was Fouque, a great person! While he was harnessing we walked about with Bompard—yes, Bompard—you know we were already great friends. He was, or thought he was, studying for a druggist and meant to join me in Paris. We made many plans for living together and helping each other along in the world to get ahead quicker—in the meantime he encouraged me, gave me good advice—he was older than I. My great bugbear was the fear of being ridiculous—Aunt Portal had ordered for me a travelling wrap called a Raglan; I was a little dubious about that Raglan, so Bompard made me put it on and walk before him in it. Té! I can see yet my shadow beside me as I walked, and gravely, with that knowing air he has, he said: ‘That is all right, old boy; you don’t look ridiculous.’—Ah, youth, youth!”
Hortense, who was beginning to fear that they should never get away from this town where every stone was eloquent of reminiscences for the great man, led the way gently towards the carriage.