"Meanwhile my persecutor knew as well as I what was passing in my family. But pity is fled from the breast of man to take refuge in brute beasts that have no understanding. The lamb bleats sadly when one of his companions is slaughtered, the ox bellows with rage and pain when he smells the blood of his kind, the horse snorts sharply and utters his doleful and piercing cry at the sight of his fellow struggling in the final agony, the dog howls with grief when his master is sick; but with whisperings and gossip and furtive pleasantry man follows his brother to the grave.
"Lift up your head in your pride, lord of creation! You have the right to do so. Lift your haughty head to heaven, O man whose heart is as cold as the gold you grasp at day and night! Heap your slanders with both hands on the man of eager heart, of ardent passions, of blood burning like fire, who has fallen in his youth! Hold high your head, proud Pharisee, and say, 'As for me, I have never fallen!'" "The good gentleman" pressed his hands to his heart, kept silent for some minutes, and at length resumed:
"Pardon me, my son, that, carried away by the memory of my sufferings, I have spoken the whole bitterness of my heart. It was but seven days after the coming of his friends when the great Arabian poet Job, the singer of so many sorrows, broke out with this heart-rending cry, 'Pereat dies in quâ natus sum!' As for me, these fifty years have I buried my lamentations in my heart, and you will pardon me if I have spoken now with bitterness, if I have calumniated mankind.
"As I had long ago given up to my creditors all that I possessed, and had sold my real estate and personal property for their benefit, after four years' imprisonment I petitioned the King for my release. The Government was of the opinion that I had suffered enough, but there remained one great difficulty—when a debtor has given up everything, does anything yet remain? The question was a knotty one. Nevertheless, after long debate, it was decided in the negative, and very politely they showed me the door.
"My future was broken, like my heart, and I had nothing to do but vegetate without profit to myself or others. But observe the fatality that pursued me. When making my surrender to my creditors I begged them to leave me a certain property of very small immediate value, which I foresaw that I might turn to good account. I promised that whatever I could make out of it should go to wiping out the debt. They laughed me in the face; and very naturally, for there was a beaver to catch. Well, Jules, this same property, which brought hardly enough to cover costs of sale, sold ten years later for a sum which would have covered all my debts and more.
"Europe was now too populous for me, and I embarked with my faithful André for New France. I chose out this peaceful dwelling place, where I might have lived happily could I have drunk the waters of Lethe. The ancients, our superiors in point of imagination, knew the needs of the human heart when they created that stream. Long tainted with the errors of the sixteenth century, I used once to cry in my pride, 'O men, if I have shared your vices, I have found few among you endowed with even one of my virtues.' But religion has taught me to know myself better, and I have humbled myself beneath God's hand, convinced at length that I could claim but little credit for merely following the inclinations of my nature.
"You are the only one, Jules, to whom I have hinted the story of my life, suppressing the cruelest episodes because I know the tenderness of your heart. My end is attained; let us now go and finish the evening with my faithful André, who will keenly appreciate this attention on the eve of your departure."
When they re-entered the house André was making up a bed on a sofa, a piece of furniture which was the result of the combined skill of master and man. This sofa, of which they were both very proud, had one leg shorter than the others, but this little inconvenience was remedied with the aid of a chip.
"This sofa," said "the good gentleman," with an air of pride, "has cost André and me more elaborate calculations than Perrault required for the construction of the Louvre; but we accomplished it at last to our satisfaction. One leg, to be sure, presents arms to all comers. But what work is perfect? You must have remembered, my André, that this camp-bed was to be a soldiers' couch."