Relatively little of Theuriet’s work is known to readers who know not French, but of this little probably the long short-story, “The Abbé Daniel,” is the most familiar. It is in the style of Ludovic Halévy’s “Abbé Constantin,” and of about the same length—a little classic of “polite rusticity,” of pastoral love, sorrow, loss, and happiness, limpid in style and artistically balanced in structure.
The plot is simple: Young Daniel loves his beautiful cousin Denise, but she marries Beauvais, the rough, hearty, typical bourgeois landed proprietor. A daughter is born—a second Denise—but the mother does not long survive. Young Daniel has entered the church and become “The Abbé Daniel.” His simple goodness leads him to adopt an orphaned lad, whom he cherishes as he would his own. One day the Abbé finds little Daniel, as he is called, feeding a threshing machine. In terror for the child’s danger, the Abbé shows his friends what the lad was doing, and the loss of his own arm is the penalty. He now resigns his parish and goes to live with the widowed father of the little Denise and assumes charge of her education, lavishing upon the child the affection he was forbidden to give to her mother. The children learn to love each other, but young Daniel goes away to the Crimean War and seems to forget. Meanwhile, Beauvais plans to marry his daughter Denise to a worthy young nobody of means, but the loving Abbé sends for his protégé, who promptly returns on leave, and the end is not difficult to surmise.
All this brief narration is but sketching the frame and omitting the picture, for who can feel the charm of the simple but never insipid story when it is bereft of the witchery of Theuriet’s style! It is worth while knowing at first hand a real French home, with the farmer-father, the daughter, the young soldier, and the Abbé Daniel.
That there are not many “intense thrills for jaded readers” in Theuriet’s straightforward work will be further illustrated by a reading of his novels—Mademoiselle Guignon, Aunt Aurelia, Claudette, The Maugars, Angela’s Fortune, and others—with which we have not here to deal; but it will also be quite evident in the simplicity of his shorter fiction, which must now be considered.
“An Easter Story” tells of Juanito, an orphan boy of fifteen. Like a weed on the pavement of Triana, he had grown up. Gipsy blood flowed in his veins and, like the gipsies, he loved his independence, vagrancy, and bull-fights. He earned a poor enough living by selling programmes at the doors of the theatres, but during Holy Week the theatres were closed, and now Good Friday finds him unhappy—for he has no money to go to the bull-fight on Easter Sunday! However, he follows the crowd until, tired and hungry, he lies down in a corner and sleeps. Two lovers pass. They put into the hand of the pretty youth a piece of silver, and so when he awakes his problem is solved. But as he starts down the street he sees a girl crying. He goes to her. It is Chata, whom he has known since childhood. Her mother is sick, she says, and the apothecary will not give her medicine because she has no money. Juanito looks into the girl’s eyes, hesitates a moment, then quickly puts into her hand the piece of silver. So Juanito did not see the bull-fight.
On Sunday Chata goes out to find her friend, and they go for a walk. Coming to a secluded corner, the girl looks into the young man’s eyes to thank him. But suddenly, moved by the sweetness of his deed, she throws her arms about his neck and cries, “I love you!”
Human interest—tenderness rather than strength—marks all Theuriet’s short fictions. “Little Gab” is quite without plot, which means that its delicacy defies condensed narration. It is a sympathetic sketch of a small hunchback whose parents are too hard-pressed in their struggle with poverty to look after the boy. The physician tells Little Gab’s sister that only the sea air and the baths at Berck can save her brother’s life. Through the unceasing labors and savings of the sister, this is at last accomplished, and both are on the heights of joy. The change is magical, and the lad returns with some prospect of recovery; but the dense air of the city is too much for Little Gab, and he dies still thinking of the beautiful sea.
Less tragic, but quite as simple in scheme, is “The Peaches,” which narrates how Herbelot is teased out of the service of the Ministry of Finance by being detected carrying home for his wife two peaches concealed in his hat.
Though its tone is not entirely typical of Theuriet, La Bretonne—which follows, in translation—is probably his most dramatic story, revealing, as it does, the good that lives in the worst of us.