As he approached the ruins he saw a black speck at the foot of the mountain, and that speck soon became Constant Galuchet, in a black coat, black trousers and gloves, black satin cravat and waistcoat. That was his costume in the country, winter and summer alike; and no matter how great the heat or the fatigue which he was about to undergo, he never left the village except in that ceremonious attire. He would have been afraid of resembling a peasant if, like Emile, he had donned a blouse and broad-brimmed gray hat.
If it be true that the bourgeois costume of our generation is the most depressing, the most inconvenient and the most unbecoming that fashion ever invented, it is equally true that all its inconveniences and deformities are most striking in the open country. In the outskirts of the large cities, one's eyes are less offended, because everything there is arranged, aligned, planked, built and walled in symmetrically, so that all the informality and charm of nature are destroyed. We may sometimes admire the beauty and symmetry of those estates which have been subjected to all the refinements of civilization; but it is very hard to imagine oneself loving such a region. The real country is not there, but in the heart of the fields, neglected and untilled to some extent, where agriculture has no thought of paltry embellishments and strict limits, where estates run together and where boundaries are indicated only by a stone or bush, put in place in full reliance upon rustic good faith. There the roads, intended only for foot passengers, equestrians or heavy carts, present innumerable picturesque irregularities; the hedges, abandoned to their natural vigor, hang in garlands, from leafy arbors, and deck themselves out with the wild climbing plants which are carefully removed in more pretentious regions. Emile remembered that he had walked about within several leagues of Paris without the pleasure of seeing a nettle, and he felt keenly the charm of that rural scenery amid which he now found himself. Poverty did not hide, in shame and degradation, beneath the feet of wealth. On the contrary it made itself manifest, light-hearted and free, on a soil which proudly bore its emblems, wild flowers and vagabond plants, the humble moss and the wood-strawberry, the water-cress on the brink of a stream with no well-defined bed, and the ivy clinging to a rock that had obstructed the path for centuries, without attracting the attention of the police. He loved the branches which overhung the road and were respected by passers-by; the bog-holes in which the frog croaked softly as if to warn the traveller,—a more vigilant sentinel than he who guards a king's palace; the old crumbling walls around the enclosure, which no one thought of rebuilding, the powerful roots which pushed up the ground and dug holes at the foot of the venerable trees; all that lack of art which makes nature ingenuous and which harmonizes so well with the severe type and grave and simple costume of the peasant.
But let that parasitic insect, that monsieur with the black coat, cleanly shaven chin, gloved hands and shambling legs, appear in the midst of that austere and impressive scene, which carries the imagination back to the epoch of primitive poesy, and that king of society becomes simply a ridiculous blotch, an annoying imperfection in the picture. What business have your funereal garments in this bright sunlight, where their creases seem to laugh scornfully as at a victim? Your offensive, misplaced costume inspires more pity than the poor man's rags; we feel that you are out of place in the fresh air and that your livery crushes you.
Never had these reflections presented themselves so vividly to Emile's mind as when Galuchet appeared before him, hat in hand, climbing the hill with a painful exertion which caused his coat-tails to flutter in laughable fashion, and pausing to brush away with his handkerchief the traces of frequent falls. Emile was strongly inclined to laugh at first; and then he asked himself angrily why the parasite was buzzing around the sacred hive. He urged his horse to a gallop, passed Galuchet without seeming to recognize him, arrived first at Châteaubrun, and announced the other's coming to Gilberte as an unavoidable calamity.
"Oh! father," said she, "don't receive that ill-bred, disagreeable man, I entreat you! let us not spoil our Châteaubrun, our home, our pleasant, unceremonious life, by the presence of this stranger, who never can and never will be in sympathy with us."
"What do you expect me to do with him, for heaven's sake?" said Monsieur de Châteaubrun, sorely embarrassed. "I invited him to come whenever he chose; I could not foresee that you, who are usually so long-suffering and generous, would take such a dislike to a poor devil because of his bad manners and his unattractive face. For my part I pity such people; I see that everyone spurns them and that life is a bore to them."
"Don't believe that," said Emile. "On the contrary they are very well satisfied and imagine that everybody likes them."
"In that case, why rob them of a delusion without which they would probably die of grief? I haven't courage to do it, and I don't believe that my dear Gilberte would advise me to have it."
"My too kind-hearted father!" rejoined Gilberte with a sigh; "I wish that I were as kind-hearted, too; indeed, I believe I am, generally speaking; but that conceited, self-satisfied creature, who seems to me to insult me when he looks at me, and who called me by my Christian name the first day he ever spoke to me!—no, I can't endure him, and I feel that he has a bad effect on me, because the sight of him makes me disdainful and sarcastic, contrary to my instincts and my character."
"It is certain that Monsieur Galuchet will become very familiar with mademoiselle," said Emile to Monsieur Antoine, "and that you will be compelled more than once to remind him of the respect he owes her. If it happens that he forces you to turn him out of the house, you will regret having received him with too much confidence. Wouldn't it be better to give him to understand by a somewhat chilly welcome that you have not forgotten the ungentlemanly way he behaved on his first visit?"