“I hear him too, my sweet little spring Lark!”
II
THE SIEGE
OR
THE LAMB, THE SHEPHERD, AND THE WOLF
“Three lambs of Chamoux can put to flight
Any wolf who comes in the night.”
My cellar will soon be empty, for the soldiers whom our lord the Duke of Nevers sent to defend us have tapped my last cask, so there is no time to be lost. I must drink with them. Taken in the right spirit, I do not object to being ruined, and it is not by any means the first time, but God send it may be the last! The soldiers, good fellows that they are, felt worse than I did when I told them that the liquor was running low. Some of my neighbors take such things tragically, but that is not my way. I have been too often to the play in the course of my life to be impressed by clowns. Since I was born into this world, how many of these masqueraders I have seen! Swiss, German, Gascons, Lorrainers; all dogs of war, with harness on their back and arms at their side; victual swallowers, hungry hounds, always ready to devour us fellows. No one can tell for what they are fighting. Today it is for the King; tomorrow for the League; now for the Black-beetles; now for the Protestants; but one side is as good as another. The best of them is not worth the powder it would take to shoot them. What difference does it make to us which robber ruffles it at court? And as for the way they appeal to Heaven, ye gods and little fishes! The Lord is old enough to know what to do. If your hide itches, scratch yourself. God is not left-handed that He should need you, and He acts as He pleases. But the worst of all is when they make it out that I too must try to pull the wool over His eyes! With all due reverence, Lord, I can say without boasting, You and I meet several times in the twenty-four hours; that is, if the good old French saying is true, “He who can good wine afford has a chance to see the Lord!” But these frauds say something else that would never enter my head. They say that I know Thee like a brother; that I am to carry out Thy will; but Thou wilt do me the justice to admit that if I leave Heaven in peace I only ask that it will do as much for me. Each of us has enough to do to keep his own house in order, Thou in Thy big world, and I in my little one. Since Thou hast made me free, Lord, Thou shouldst be free also! But these fools want me to mix myself up in Thy concerns, to speak in Thy name, to decide how men are to take Thy Sacraments, and if they do otherwise, to declare them my enemies and Thine. Mine indeed! By no means; I have none; for all men are my friends. Let them fight, then, if it likes them, I am out of the game;—that is if they will let me alone, but that is just what the rascals will not do. If I will not be the enemy of one of them they will both set on me, so between two fires I must be hit. Here goes then! I will get to fighting myself, for I would rather on the whole be first anvil and then hammer, than anvil all the time. I wish some one would tell me why such brutes came into the world? marauders, politicians, great nobles, who bleed our France while they blow her trumpet and stick their fingers in her pocket. They are not content to devour our own substance, but they must needs attack the stores of others. They threaten Germany, cast the eye of longing on Italy, and even poke their noses into the harem of the Grand Turk! They would like to absorb half the earth, they who would not know enough to grow cabbages on it! Never mind, old boy, do not let us fret over it, since all is for the best as it is until the happy day when we can make it better in the shortest possible time. It is a poor beast that is of no use, and I heard a story once about the good Lord;—(Pardon, Almighty, my head is full of Thee today)—He was walking with Peter in one of our suburbs, Béyant,[1] and a woman sat cooling her heels on her doorstep. She looked so bored that our Father, out of the goodness of His heart, drew a hundred fleas from his pocket and threw them to her, saying, “There is something to amuse yourself with, my daughter!” The woman roused herself to see what she could catch, and every time she caught one of the beasts she laughed for joy.
Through this same charity, no doubt, Heaven has bestowed on us those big two-legged beasts who shear our wool. They keep us busy, so let us be joyful. Vermin is a sign of health, they say, (and our masters are certainly vermin), so I say again, be joyful, my friends, for if that is true no one is healthier than we are. Let me whisper a word in your ear; we shall have the best of it if we are patient; cold and frost, good-for-nothings at court or in camp, will have their day. They too will pass, but the good ground remains and we are there to enrich it. One crop will put all to rights, meanwhile let us suck up the bottom of my cask, if only to make room for the vintage of next year.
My daughter, Martine, said to me one day, “You are a braggart. To hear you one would think that you only work with your mouth, idling, gossiping like a bell-clapper, yawning, and staring; you pretend to live only for feasting, and are ready to drink up the sea; yet really you cannot be happy one day without work. You want people to think you are careless, wasteful, and idle as a cock-chafer; you pretend not to count what goes into your purse nor what comes out of it, but it would make you ill if your day was not marked off hour by hour like a striking clock, and you know to a penny what you have spent since last Easter, and the man does not live who ever got ahead of you. Dear old stupid head, innocent lamb that he is! ‘Three lambs of Chamoux can put to flight any wolf who comes in the night.’”
I laughed, but did not answer Madame Saucy-Tongue. Besides, the child is right, though she ought not to say so, but a woman only hides what she knows nothing about. It is true that she understands me, for did I not make her?
Come, Colas Breugnon, you may as well confess you commit many follies, but you are not a fool. Like every one else, by Jove, you have a simpleton up your sleeve who shows when you like, but he is tucked away out of sight when you need a clear head and free hands. Like all Frenchmen, you have the sense of reason and order so firmly fixed in your noddle that you can let yourself go safely. The only danger is for those poor fools who look at you with an open mouth and try to imitate you. Fine speeches, sounding verse, daring projects, are all enjoyable. They exalt and kindle the soul. But we only burn up our chips, and leave the big logs in order on the wood-pile. My reason sits at ease and looks on at the freaks of my imagination, and all for my own amusement. The world is my theater, and without stirring from my seat, I am the play; I can applaud Matamore or Francatrippa; I witness tourneys and royal processions, I shout “At him again!” when a man gets his head cracked all for our good pleasure, and to add to it, I pretend to take part in the farce and to believe in it only just enough to keep up the joke. No more, you may be sure. That is the way to listen to fairy tales and not to them only! There is Some One up there above the clouds for whom we have a great respect when the procession passes through our streets with cross and banner, chanting the Oremus; we drape the walls of our houses with white—but between ourselves?—Shut up, chatterer, you go too far! Be deaf, Lord, to my folly, and accept my humble service.