THOSE days were in the reign of my grandfather.
A long line of ancestors must have reigned before him, to judge by the portraits in the drawing room. Most of these portraits were now much blackened, so that unless there was a flood of light it was pretty difficult to guess what the frames held. One of the most defaced of them was the one that most commanded my admiration. Only the face and one hand were visible—they might have been a woman’s face and hand; but I had been told of the important part their owner had borne in the wars, and I wondered how so young and handsome a man could have fought so much. The lady with the rose attracted me, too. No matter on what side of her I stood, from every side she smiled upon me and showed me her flower. I pass over certain stem faces trussed up in high collars, swathed in huge neckcloths, as if afflicted with colds, and come to two portraits which occupied the place of honour on the right and left of the chimney. One wore a blue coat laced with silver, a scarlet waistcoat, white knee breeches and the three-cornered hat of the French Guard. The other wore the bear-skin cap and the blue great coat with gilt buttons and red braid on sleeves and collar of a grenadier of the Old Guard. The soldier of the King and the soldier of the Emperor were companion pictures. To judge by their decorations, both had well served France. Father had proudly told me of their exploits, and explained their grade. I could not look at them without a sort of reverential fear. They were not handsome, having more bone than flesh, and features all out of drawing, but I should not have dared to call them ugly. Their eyes, severely fixed upon me, troubled me. They reproached me for not having achieved wonderful victories like that of the grenadier at Moscow, or for at least not having undergone heroic defeat like the French Guard at Malplaquet. For a long time these two were the only names of battles that I knew. And I used to blush for Tem Bossette’s wooden sabres and the laths that I bestrode. I understood that my feats of horsemanship in the garden were not serious, were not real. Those two redoubtable portraits sometimes puffed me up with pride and again overwhelmed me with their importance. One day when I was gazing upon them with some uneasiness grandfather came by, and with his little dry smile and his most impertinent pursing of the lips, let fall the words,
“Pooh! They are only bad paintings.”
It is dangerous to teach too much esthetics to a child. I was glad that they were bad paintings. In a moment the soldier of the King with his three-cornered hat and the soldier of the Emperor with his bear-skin cap lost all their fascination. Thenceforth their story was nothing to me. I was set free from the servitude of a compelled admiration. I at once felt my superiority over a badly painted past, and could judge the gallery of ancestors with insolence.
One day the subject of exiling them to the garret was agitated. Grandfather desired to replace them with engravings.
“They are of the eighteenth century,” he observed, by way of settling the question, making the statement simply and courteously, as the most natural thing in the world. But Aunt Deen exclaimed indignantly and father exerted that calm authority that broke down all resistance. Grandfather did not insist; he never insisted. But I understood him, since they were bad paintings.
Grandfather’s government was negligent and fitful. As well say he had no government. When I read in my history book, or in that of my elder brothers, the chapter consecrated to the sluggard kings I immediately thought of grandfather. He made no point at all of his prerogatives. And yet his name was Augustus. I knew it, because great-aunt Bernardine, she whom we called Aunt Deen, and who was his sister, called him Augustus, though as seldom as possible, for his name irritated him.
“Yes,” he said one day, “they named me Augustus—why the mischief I don’t know. That’s another trick that ancestors have. They fasten a ridiculous label upon you for all your days.”
Though of medium height, grandfather gave the impression of being tall, because of his fine head, which he was not in the least proud of and carried with indifference. His well-cut nose was slightly aquiline. His white hair, which he would never have had cut but for Aunt Deen’s abrupt interventions, curled a little, and he was continually thrusting his fingers through his long beard,—which waved like that of the Emperor Charlemagne in the pictures,—lest some grains of tobacco should be caught in it, for he smoked and took snuff. On a nearer view the impression as of a prophet which he first gave gradually faded away and vanished. He looked down too often, or lifted upon you vague eyes that refused to see you. You felt that you did not exist, so far as he was concerned, and nothing is more irritating than that. He cared for nothing and for no one. His clothes hung upon his body by the grace of God and Aunt Deen. He never knew whether they were well or ill fitting, and as to changing them he would gladly have worn them till they left him first. The more worn they were the more was he at ease in them. I fancy that he had never known the use of suspenders, and cravats seemed to him a wretched concession to fashion. He detested whatever restricted his movements and would have been content to wear all day long the green dressing gown and the black velvet Greek cap in which he felt at ease, and which he did sometimes wear to the midday breakfast. When my brothers and I saw him appear in this accoutrement we would be bursting with laughter which a glance from our father forced us to smother; but the same glance seemed to include a reproof of the famous dressing gown.
It was with great difficulty that grandfather could be induced to be regular at meals.