Christmas Stories from French and Spanish Writers

by Unknown

I want to take you with me to Brittany, not without having first warned you against myself, however. You must not take me too literally when I describe the customs of that country. My descriptions are absolutely faithful, but they represent Brittany as it was from 1815 to 1830. I went back there this summer after an absence of half a century, and I recognized nothing but the scenery. The men are all civilized, and far more Parisian than I. In order to re-classify them I should have been compelled to drive them back to their national dress, that they so foolishly gave up.

I will take you back, therefore, to the year 1822; and you would not doubt it for an instant if you could follow me into my father's study. The walls were papered with Republican money. He had obtained it in exchange for cash; and when it turned out to be as worthless as waste paper, he determined that it should be of some use to him anyway. I fancy that its usefulness consisted in reminding him of the fragility of human things. The walls were also decorated with portraits of the royal family, from the King down to M. de Villèle, all tacked on with pins. But these portraits were not to be relied upon, for when they were turned upside down, they represented, by some ingenious combination, the Ogre of Corsica, the King of Rome, and the Empress Marie Louise. They were suited to all tastes and all opinions.

This extraordinary study was situated on the first floor,—for our house had a first floor, differing thus from the other houses of the borough, which had nothing but a ground floor. It also had a slate roof, which filled me with legitimate pride. It looked out upon the street which circled the graveyard; and I will say at once, to be sincere, that there was no other street in St. Jean Brévelay. This view and this neighborhood will not strike you, with your modern ideas, as very attractive; but in Brittany we like graveyards,—I might even say that we like sadness. And then in this graveyard stood the church,—an imposing church, I can assure you, with a vault upon which hell was faithfully represented on one side and heaven on the other. Near our window there was also a great fir, which was worth a whole forest in itself, and which sheltered a formidable number of crows. If, however, in spite of this double attraction one found no pleasure in contemplating the view from that side, we had another façade to resort to,—a façade opening upon an immense and magnificent garden. There you might have looked down upon a patch of cabbage, a patch of French beans, of peas, of carrots, and of potatoes. We had flowers too,—so many flowers, so many vegetables, and so much fruit, that we made gratuitous distributions of them every Sunday. Besides our apple-trees, the branches of which bent under the weight of the fruit, we had pear-trees, cherry-trees, and plum-trees. My father, who had travelled considerably, particularly through the South, prided himself upon his enterprising spirit. Every year when the plums had been picked, he collected them in great piles; from these piles the best were chosen, put upon a species of riddles, and the riddles were laid in the sun. This was with a view to making prunes. The plums rotted in a few days; the birds and other animals ate them; and soon there was nothing left but the stones. These were then thrown into the street, where we used to pick them up, in order to make piles and stick a little flag in the top. The next year my father proceeded to make prunes in precisely the same manner.

We were very proud of our rose-bushes, which furnished roses for the altars, and of our apple-trees, from which we obtained a most excellent cider. We had our wine-press, our kneading-trough, our oven, and our laundrying basins. We had pastures for our cows, wheat-fields, fields of buckwheat and of rye. We sowed just enough to supply our wants. There was no mill in our village, so we were compelled to send our grain to Pontécouvrant. When it was ground, it was brought back and made into very good rye bread for our daily use. We also made a great loaf of wheat bread once a week, which we used for the soup.

Every morning my father started out, gun on shoulder,—for in those days there were no rural constables nor gendarmes (the gendarmes were at Plumelec), and one could hunt all the year round. He came in at noon for dinner, and at six o'clock for supper. My greatest delight consisted in running to meet him and looking into his game-bag. I never found any game in it, but it often contained a big trout or some fine eels. We eventually discovered that the hunt was a mere pretext, and that his real passion was fishing. He was extremely taciturn, as all of his children have been after him, and I believe that to be one of the essential qualities of an angler.

During dinner he never breathed a word. In the evening at supper he described the events of the day, when he had been lucky. We took our meals in the kitchen, which was vast and cleanly. There were twenty of us at table, and sometimes more, owing to the legendary Breton hospitality. The table formed a long rectangle. My mother occupied one end of it with my sisters and myself; my father sat at the other end alone; while the two long sides were reserved for the servants. These were no less than twelve in number: the gardener, the ploughman, the shepherd, the stable-boy, and the maid-servants. This will no doubt give you the impression of the household of a wealthy farmer or a country gentleman. Not at all. In the beautiful borough of St. Jean Brévelay there was neither butcher, baker, nor grocer. The only merchants that I ever saw there were a mercer and a tavern-keeper. One was compelled to send to Vannes, seven leagues away, for everything, or else live like Robinson Crusoe on his island.

I have learned since that the ploughman, who was our first man, earned only thirty francs a year. I leave you to judge of the rest. It was a poor country, and one could enjoy all the comforts which it afforded with an income of twelve hundred francs a year. One of our chief pleasures consisted in the care of our garden. My mother had a little bed in which roses, tulips, pansies, and daisies grew in abundance. She was particularly fond of mignonette and honey-suckle. The hedge around our kitchen-garden was covered with honey-suckle, elder, and a whole family of sweet-smelling creepers, over which our bees hovered and buzzed. There was seldom a day when we did not walk around the garden once, and that was quite a journey. We had another habit which I do not understand as well, and which consisted in walking around Colas' field every day after dinner; that is, at one o'clock. We first went down a hollow road where the mud was not wanting when it had rained. The flowers were not wanting there either in summer; we walked under a real vault of them. This road led to the blacksmith's shop, where I always found something to admire,—the great bellows, the incandescent iron, the sparks flying from the furnace like joyous fireworks. Next to the blacksmith's shop stood Marion's house,—the last house at the end of the village. Marion was a girl of twenty who had lost her mother when she was eighteen. Everybody had advised her to go into service; but she had preferred to engage herself to my mother as a seamstress, by the year. Her house—"Marion's house," as it was always spoken of—belonged to her. It was not a great dowry. It consisted of two rooms under a thatched roof, and a little yard where she raised her chickens. She had been warned against the dangers of living alone at her age, and in a comparatively isolated place; but she was a fearless girl and somewhat unsociable. She had discovered, I do not know where,—in one of the neighboring farms, perhaps,—a widow who was only too happy to occupy one of her rooms gratuitously, and who was a companion and a protection to her when she came home after her day's work.

Colas' field began at Marion's door. It was surely not what one would call beautiful. We walked straight before us, and got back to our starting-point at the end of an hour without having seen anything but apple-trees and furrows. On Sunday when this task had been accomplished, we found Marion in her yard among her chickens, waiting to go to vespers with us. I always took her hand, and she told me stories of Poulpiquets.

I led a joyful life. My mother, too, seemed happy. Her chief occupation lay in nursing the sick, and her heaviest expense in providing them with broth and drugs; the latter were sent for to the druggist's at Bignan. I had never seen a doctor until I went to Lorient to enter school. Whenever she had a perplexing case, she called my father into consultation. As he had been a soldier, nothing surprised him. His method was to bleed. He one day undertook to vaccinate the entire population, and succeeded in doing so by offering five cents to all those who consented to honor him with their trust. This philanthropic operation must have made a great hole in the household budget.

We had a library which contained fully twenty volumes. My sisters spent their time in taking them from my mother's room, and my mother in taking them from their hands. There were,—"Celina, or, The Child of Mystery and of Love;" "Alexis, or, The Wooden Cottage;" "The Helmet and the Square Cap, or, Both suited him." We also had, "The Evenings at the Château," by Madame de Genlis, "The Yellow Tales," and "Robinson Crusoe." I was of course not permitted to touch the novels. I was allowed "Robinson Crusoe," "The Yellow Tales," and "The Evenings at the Château," of which permission I availed myself eagerly, for I was ever a great reader. "Robinson Crusoe" particularly delighted me, and I read it three or four times a year. I had also a tender feeling for "Celina," which I only half understood. In the first place, it represented the forbidden fruit; and in the next place, it had pictures. I never got to the dénouement, because my mother, seeing that I was incorrigible, resolved to burn the cuerpo del delito.