How incessantly they worked, Auguste and Rose, and how cheerfully they worked! One could hear her singing, and him whistling, at it all day. Yet they seemed to have abundant leisure to exchange a deal of pleasantry and harmless banter. Auguste was a Swiss, and a bigoted Protestant, and never lost an opportunity of holding forth on the superiority of the reformed religion. If he thought the family were out of hearing, he would grow very animated and declamatory. But Rose, who also had hopes, though perhaps faint, for my salvation, would suddenly rush into the room with the carpet broom, and drive him out, with threats of Miss Agläé, and the broomstick.
The gardener, Monsieur Benoît, was also a great favourite of mine, and I of his, for I was never tired of listening to his wonderful adventures. He had, so he informed me, been a soldier in the Grande Armée. He enthralled me with hair-raising accounts of his exploits: how, when leading a storming party—he was always the leader—one dark and terrible night, the vivid and incessant lightning betrayed them by the flashing of their bayonets; and how in a few minutes they were mowed down by mitraille. He had led forlorn hopes, and performed deeds of astounding prowess. How many Life-guardsmen he had annihilated: ‘Ah! ben oui!’ he was afraid to say. He had been personally noticed by ‘Le p’tit caporal.’ There were many, whose deeds were not to compare with his, who had been made princes and mareschals. Parbleu! but his luck was bad. ‘Pas d’chance! pas d’chance! Mo’sieu Henri.’ As Monsieur Benoît recorded his feats, and witnessed my unbounded admiration, his voice would grow more and more sepulchral, till it dropped to a hoarse and scarcely audible whisper.
I was a little bewildered one day when, having breathlessly repeated some of his heroic deeds to the Marquise, she with a quiet smile assured me that ‘ce petit bon-homme,’ as she called him, had for a short time been a drummer in the National Guard, but had never been a soldier. This was a blow to me; moreover, I was troubled by the composure of the Marquise. Monsieur Benoît had actually been telling me what was not true. Was it, then, possible that grown-up people acquired the privilege of fibbing with impunity? I wondered whether this right would eventually become mine!
At Bourg-la-Reine there is, or was, a large school. Three days in the week I had to join one of the classes there; on the other three one of the ushers came up to Larue for a couple of hours of private tuition. At the school itself I did not learn very much, except that boys everywhere are pretty similar, especially in the badness of their manners. I also learnt that shrugging the shoulders while exhibiting the palms of the hands, and smiting oneself vehemently on the chest, are indispensable elements of the French idiom. The indiscriminate use of the word ‘parfaitement’ I also noticed to be essential when at a loss for either language or ideas, and have made valuable use of it ever since.
Monsieur Vincent, my tutor, was a most good-natured and patient teacher. I incline, however, to think that I taught him more English than he taught me French. He certainly worked hard at his lessons. He read English aloud to me, and made me correct his pronunciation. The mental agony this caused me makes me hot to think of still. I had never heard his kind of Franco-English before. To my ignorance it was the most comic language in the world. There were some words which, in spite of my endeavours, he persisted in pronouncing in his own way. I have since got quite used to the most of them, and their only effect is to remind me of my own rash ventures in a foreign tongue. There are one or two words which recall the pain it gave me to control my emotions. He would produce his penknife, for instance; and, contemplating it with a despondent air, would declare it to be the most difficult word in the English language to pronounce. ‘Ow you say ’im?’ ‘Penknife,’ I explained. He would bid me write it down; then having spelt it, he would, with much effort, and a sound like sneezing—oh! the pain I endured!—slowly repeat ‘Penkneef.’ I gave it up at last; and he was gratified with his success. As my explosion generally occurred about five minutes afterwards, Monsieur Vincent failed to connect cause and effect. When we parted he gave me a neatly bound copy of La Bruyère as a prize—for his own proficiency, I presume. Many a pleasant half-hour have I since spent with the witty classic.
Except the controversial harangues of the zealot Auguste, my religious teaching was neglected on week days. On Sundays, if fine, I was taken to a Protestant church in Paris; not infrequently to the Embassy. I did not enjoy this at all. I could have done very well without it. I liked the drive, which took about an hour each way. Occasionally Agläé and I went in the Bourg-la-Reine coucou. But Mr. Ellice had arranged that a carriage should be hired for me. Probably he was not unmindful of the convenience of the old ladies. They were not. The carriage was always filled. Even Mademoiselle Henriette managed to go sometimes—aided by a little patent medicine, and when it was too hot for the chauffrette. If she was unable, a friend in the neighbourhood was offered a seat; and I had to sit bodkin, or on Mademoiselle Agläé’s lap. I hated the ‘friend’; for, secretly, I felt the carriage was mine, though of course I never had the bad taste to say so.
They went to Mass, and I was allowed to go with them, in addition to my church, as a special favour. I liked the music, the display of candles, the smell of the incense, and the dresses of the priests; and wondered whether when undressed—unrobed, that is—they were funny old gentlemen like Monsieur le Curé at Larue, and took such a prodigious quantity of snuff up their noses and under their finger-nails. The ladies did a good deal of shopping, and we finished off at the Flower Market by the Madeleine, where I, through the agency of Mademoiselle Agläé, bought plants for ‘Maman.’ This gave ‘Maman’ un plaisir inouï, and me too; for the dear old lady always presented me with a stick of barley-sugar in return. As I never possessed a sou (Miss Agläé kept account of all my expenses and disbursements) I was strongly in favour of buying plants for ‘Maman.’
I loved the garden. It was such a beautiful garden; so beautifully kept by Monsieur Benoît, and withered old Mère Michèle, who did the weeding and helped Rose once a week in the laundry. There were such pretty trellises, covered with roses and clematis; such masses of bright flowers and sweet mignonette; such tidy gravel walks and clipped box edges; such floods of sunshine; so many butterflies and lizards basking in it; the birds singing with excess of joy. I used to fancy they sang in gratitude to the dear old Marquise, who never forgot them in the winter snows.
What a quaint but charming picture she was amidst this quietude,—she who had lived through the Reign of Terror: her mob cap, garden apron, and big gloves; a trowel in one hand, a watering-pot in the other; potting and unpotting; so busy, seemingly so happy. She loved to have me with her, and let me do the watering. What a pleasure that was! The scores of little jets from the perforated rose, the gushing sound, the freshness and the sparkle, the gratitude of the plants, to say nothing of one’s own wet legs. ‘Maman’ did not approve of my watering my own legs. But if the watering-pot was too big for me how could I help it? By and by a small one painted red within and green outside was discovered in Bourg-la-Reine, and I was happy ever afterwards.
Much of my time was spent with the children and nurses of the family which occupied the château. The costume of the head nurse with her high Normandy cap (would that I had a female pen for details) invariably suggested to me that she would make any English showman’s fortune, if he could only exhibit her stuffed. At the cottage they called her ‘La Grosse Normande.’ Not knowing her by any other name, I always so addressed her. She was not very quick-witted, but I think she a little resented my familiarity, and retaliated by comparisons between her compatriots and mine, always in a tone derogatory to the latter. She informed me as a matter of history, patent to all nurses, that the English race were notoriously bow-legged; and that this was due to the vicious practice of allowing children to use their legs before the gristle had become bone. Being of an inquiring turn of mind, I listened with awe to this physiological revelation, and with chastened and depressed spirits made a mental note of our national calamity. Privately I fancied that the mottled and spasmodic legs of Achille—whom she carried in her arms—or at least so much of the infant Pelides’ legs as were not enveloped in a napkin, gave every promise of refuting her generalisation.