This explanation thrilled new thoughts and ambition in the breast of the little marquis. Why should not he begin at once to explore the world, and see for himself what lay beyond the dull precincts of Saint-Laurent? He then would become distinguished like his grandfather, and the countess would be proud of him. The scheme hurried his pulses, and gave him his first taste of excitement, which stood him in place of a very small appetite. He watched his moment in the artful instinct of childhood with a scheme in its head. It was not difficult to elude a careless nurse and gossiping servants, and he knew an alley by which the broad straight road, leading from the castle to the town, might be reached over a friendly stile that involved no pledge of secrecy from an untrustworthy lodge-keeper. And away he was scampering along the hedge, drunk with excitement and the glory of his own unprotected state, drunk with the spring sunshine and the smell of violets that made breathing a bliss.
Picture a tumble-down town, with a quantity of little streets breaking unexpectedly into glimpses of green meadow and foliage; rickety omnibuses, jerking and rumbling upon uncouth wheels, mysteriously held by their drivers from laying their contents upon the jagged pavements; little old-fashioned squares, washed by runlets for paving divisions, with the big names of La Trinité, Saint-Gervais, Guillaume le Conquérant, and the Grand Turc,—the latter the most unlikely form of heretic ever to have shaken the equilibrium of the quaint town; a public fountain, a market-place, many-aisled churches, smelling of damp and decay, their fretted arches worn with age, and their pictures bleached of all colour by the moist stone; primitive shops, latticed windows, asthmatical old men in blouses and night-caps, in which they seem to have been born and in which they promise to die; girls in linen towers and starched side-flaps concealing every curl and wave of their hair, their sabots beating the flags with the click of castanets; groups of idle huzzars, moustached and menacing, strutting the dilapidated public gardens like walking arsenals, the eternal cigarette between their lips, and the everlasting sapristi and sacré upon them. Throw in a curé or two, wide-hatted, of leisured and benevolent aspect, with a smile addressed to the world as a general mon enfant; an abbé, less leisured and less assured of public indulgence; a discreet frère, whose hurrying movements shake his robes to the dimensions of a balloon; an elegant sous-préfet, conscious of Parisian tailoring, and much in request in provincial salons; a wooden-legged colonel, devoted to the memory of the first Napoleon, and wrathful at that of him of Sedan; a few civilians of professional calling, deferential to the military and in awe of the colonel; the local gossip and shopkeeper on Trinity Square, Mère Lescaut, who knows everything about everybody, and the usual group of antagonistic politicians. For the outskirts, five broad roads diverging star-wise from a common centre, with an inviting simplicity of aspect that might tempt the least adventurous spirit of childhood to make, by one of those pleasant, straight, and leafy paths, for the alluring horizon. Add the local lion, Great William’s Tower, a very respectable Norman ruin, where a more mythical personage than William might easily have been born, and which might very well hallow more ancient loves than those of Robert and the washerwoman Arletta; a splendid equestrian statue of the Conqueror, and a quantity of threads of silver water running between mossy banks, where women in mountainous caps of linen wash clothes, and the violets in spring and autumn grow so thickly, that the air is faint with their sweet scent. Afar, green field upon green field, stretching on all sides, till the atmospheric blue blots out their colour and melts them into the sky; sudden spaces of wood making shadows upon the bright plains and dusty roads, fringed with poplars, cutting uninterrupted paths to the horizon.
The weekly fair was being held on the Place de la Trinité, when Hervé made his way so far. The noise and jollity stunned him. Long tables were spread round, highly coloured and decorated with a variety of objects, and good-humoured cleanly Norman women in caps, and men in blue blouses, were shouting exchanged speech, or wrangling decorously. Hervé thrust his hands into his pockets in a pretence of security, like that assumed by his elders upon novel occasions, though his pulses shook with unaccustomed force and velocity; and he walked round the tables with uneasy impulses towards the toys and sweetmeats, and thought a ride on the merry-go-round would be an enviable sensation. But these temptations he gallantly resisted, as unbecoming his serious business. Women smiled upon him, and called him, Ce joli petit monsieur, a fact which caused him more surprise than anything else, having heard his father describe him as ugly. He bowed to them, when he rejected their offers of toys and penknives, but could not resist the invitation of a fresh cake, and held his hat in one hand, while he searched in his pocket to pay for it. Hervé made up for his dulness by a correctness of demeanour that was rather depressing than captivating.
Munching his cake with a secret pleasure in this slight infringement of social law, he wandered upon the skirt of the noisy and good-natured crowd, which, in the settlement of its affairs, was lavish in smiles and jokes. What should he do with his liberty and leisure when his senses had tired of this particular form of intoxication? He bethought himself of the famous tower which Pierrot, the valet, had assured him was the largest castle in the world. Glancing up the square, he saw the old wooden-legged colonel limping towards him, and Hervé promptly decided that so warlike a personage could not fail to be aware of the direction in which the tower lay. He barred the colonel’s way with his hat in his hand, and said: ‘Please, Monsieur, will you be so good as to direct me to the castle of William the Conqueror?’
The colonel heard the soft tremulous pipe, and brought his fierce glare down upon the urchin with hawklike penetration. Fearful menace seemed to lie in the final tap of his wooden leg upon the pavement, as he came to a standstill in front of Hervé, and he cleared his chest with a loud military sound like boom. Hervé stood the sound, but winced and repeated his request more timidly. Now this desperate-looking soldier had a kindly heart, and loved children. He had not the least idea that his loud boom, and his shaggy eyebrows, and his great scowling red face frightened the life out of them. A request from a child so small and feeble to be directed to anybody’s castle, much less the Conqueror’s, when so many strong and idle arms in the world must be willing to carry him, afflicted him with an almost maternal throb of tenderness. By his smile he dispersed the unpleasant impressions of his boom and the click of his artificial limb, and completely won Hervé’s confidence, who was quite pleased to find his thin little fingers lost in the grasp of his new companion’s large hand, when the giant in uniform turned and volunteered to conduct him to the tower. Crossing the Square of Guillaume le Conquérant, Hervé even became expansive.
‘Look, Monsieur,’ he cried, pointing to the beautiful bronze statue, ‘one would say that the horse was about to jump, and throw the knight.’
The colonel slapped his chest like a man insulted in the person of a glorious ancestor, and emitted an unusually gruff boom, that nearly blew little Hervé to the other side of the square, and made his lips tremble.
‘I’d like, young sir, to see the horse that could have thrown that man,’ said the Norman.
‘There was a Baron of Vervainville when Robert was Duke of Normandy. He went with Robert to the Crusades. The countess has told me that only very distinguished and brave people went to the Crusades in those days. They were wars, Monsieur, a great way off. I often try to make out what is written on his tomb in Saint-Laurent, but I can never get further than Geoffroi,’ Hervé concluded, with his queer short sigh, while in front of them rose the mighty Norman ruin upon the landscape, like the past glancing poignantly through an ever youthful smile.
The colonel, enlightened by this communication upon the lad’s identity, stared at him in alarmed surprise.