The Bagpipers

by George Sand

"No doubt, no doubt, my son," returned the fine old man; "I have always thought so. I loved the mother of my children more than money, more than talent, more than pleasure or livery talk, more, indeed, than anything in the world. I see that Huriel is tarred with the same brush, for he has changed, without regret, all his habits and tastes so as to fit himself to be worthy of Brulette. I believe that you feel in the same way, for you show it plainly enough. But, nevertheless, talent is a thing which God likewise values, for he does not bestow it on everybody, and we are bound to respect and help those whom he has thus marked as the sheep of his fold."

"But don't you think that your son Huriel has as much mind and more talent for music than José?"

"My son Huriel has both mind and talent. He was received into the fraternity of the bagpipers when he was only eighteen years old, and though he has never practised the profession, he has great knowledge and aptitude for it. But there is a wide difference, friend Tiennet, between those who acquire and those who originate; there are some with ready fingers and accurate memory who can play agreeably anything they learn, but there are others who are not content with being taught,—who go beyond all teaching, seeking ideas, and bestowing on all future musicians the gift of their discoveries. Now, I tell you that Joseph is one of them; in him are two very remarkable natures: the nature of the plain, as I may say, where he was born, which gives him his tranquil, calm, and solid ideas, and the nature of our hills and woods, which have enlarged his understanding and brought him tender and vivid and intelligent thoughts. He will one day be, for those who have ears to hear, something more than a mere country minstrel. He will become a true master of the bagpipe as in the olden time,—one of those to whom the great musicians listened with attention, and who changed at times the customs of their art."

"Do you really think, Père Bastien, that José will become a second Head-Woodsman of your craft?"

"Ah! my poor Tiennet," replied the old minstrel, sighing, "you don't know what you are talking about, and I should have hard work to make you understand it."

"Try to do so, at any rate," I replied; "you are good to listen to, and it isn't good that I should continue the simpleton that I am."

TWENTY-FIFTH EVENING.

"You must know," began Père Bastien, very readily (for he was fond of talking when he was listened to willingly), "that I might have been something if I had given myself wholly up to music. I could have done so had I made myself a fiddler, as I thought of doing in my youth. I don't mean that one improves a talent by fiddling three days and nights at a wedding, like that fellow I can hear from here, murdering the tune of our mountain jig. When a man has no object before his mind but money, he gets tired and rusty; but there's a way for an artist to live by his body without killing the soul within him. As every festival brings him in at least twenty or thirty francs, that's enough for him to take his ease, to live frugally, and travel about for pleasure and instruction. That's what Joseph wants to do, and I have always advised him to do it. But here's what happened to me. I fell in love, and the mother of my dear children would not hear of marrying a fiddler without hearth or home, always a-going, spending his nights in a racket and his days in sleeping, and ending his life with a debauch; for, unhappily, it is seldom that a man can keep himself straight at that business. She kept me tied to the woodsman's craft, and that's the whole story. I never regretted my talent as long as she lived. To me, as I told you, love is the divinest music. When I was left a widower with two young children, I gave myself wholly to them; but my music got very rusty and my fingers very stiff by dint of handling axe and shears; and, I confess to you, Tiennet, that if my two children were happily married, I should quit this burdensome business of slinging iron and chopping wood, and I would be off, happy and young again, to live as I liked, seeking converse with angels, until old age brought me back, feeble but satisfied, to my children's hearth. And then, too, I am sick of felling trees. Do you know, Tiennet, I love them, those noble old companions of my life, who have told me so many things by the murmur of their leaves and the crackling of their branches. And I, more malignant than the fire from heaven, I have thanked them by driving an axe into their hearts and laying them low at my feet like so many dismembered corpses! Don't laugh at me, but I have never seen an old oak fall, nor even a young willow, without trembling with pity or with fear, as an assassin of the works of God. I long to walk beneath their shady branches, repulsed no longer as an ingrate, and listening at last to the secrets I was once unworthy to hear."

The Head-Woodsman, whose voice had grown impassioned, stopped short and thought a moment; and so did I, amazed not to think him the madman I should have thought another in his place,—perhaps because he had managed to put his ideas into me, or possibly because I myself had had some such ideas in my own head.