Having said thus much of my kind friend and preceptor, I must take some notice of the other tenant—the only other tenant of the house. This was the good priest’s housekeeper, who was probably some four or five years older than himself; but yet as busy, bustling, active a little body as ever was seen, doing every thing and trying to do more. What were the qualities for which Father Bonneville originally chose her to superintend his domestic affairs, I really do not know; but it certainly was not for her beauty—perhaps it might be for the reverse. Nature intended evidently, at first, to cast her in what I may call the pippin-headed mould; for her head was as round as a ball, furnished with two eyes like sloes, and not much larger; but by some freak of nature, the nose had been infinitely projected. It always seemed to me as if her parents, or nurses, had been in the custom of lifting her up by it, as a sort of handle, and it certainly had not decreased in volume in latter life. She was a little woman too, hardly fitted to carry such a burden, but strong, well-formed, and neither lean nor fat. Her excellent health and spirits, she attributed to never having drunk any cider, though she had lived in the cider provinces.
“No, no,” she said, “I always knew better than that, if cider is dear at three sous, wine is cheap at ten. It is not much of either that I drink, as heaven knows and Father Bonneville, but when it is not water, it shall be wine.”
I must point out to the reader more particularly her manner of connecting heaven and Father Bonneville together; for it was very characteristic of her mind, and she did it on all occasions. Indeed the two ideas seemed so intimately blended in her mind that they could never be separated. She was a good creature as ever lived, and looked up to all that was good, and it is probable that as, in her humility, she put both heaven and Father Bonneville very, very far above herself indeed, the two objects got confounded in the distance.
She was a very good creature indeed, as I have said, and oh, how I used to teaze her! She bore it with wonderful patience and good humor, sometimes laughing with me, sometimes laughing at me, sometimes affecting to be very angry, but still mending my clothes, setting my little room to rights, giving me any good thing she could lay her hands upon, and showing me all the kindness and tenderness of a mother. I am afraid, however, that there was a more serious storm than usual brewing about the period I speak of; for I not only continued to teaze poor Jeanette with my boyish fun, but I had added a great deal to her labors and embarrassments by leaving fish-hooks, and bits of line, and broken rods—some of the fish-hooks covered with worms too, in her kitchen, and her pantry, and the most sacred places of her own particular domain. But just at that time, came the catching of the trout I have mentioned, and that immediately cured all grievances. Not that I mean to say, that the good woman was moved by any peculiar passion for fish herself; for she would not have deprived Father Bonneville and me of a morsel of it for the world, but from that moment she became aware that there was some utility in fish-hooks—that they were made for some other purpose than running into her hands, or littering her table. I provided in short something which could gratify the good Father’s taste, and that was quite sufficient apology for all offenses in the eyes of his worthy housekeeper.
With these two, such as I have depicted them, I passed several years of my early life. I must have been about nine when I caught the trout, and if I ever had been a weak or sickly boy, I certainly was so no longer. I could not have been ten, I am sure, and I must have been there at this time for some years—sufficient at least to let the memory of other scenes fade away. My time passed sweetly and pleasantly. I had plenty of wholesome food. I had exercise for the mind and exercise for the body. Quiet and still, the place certainly was. Amusements, for persons of my age, there were none in the town itself, except when there was some great Church fete, or when some Italian led through the town a bear or a monkey, or carried a marmot, or an instrument of music, and when once in the year the great fair took place, which brightened up the town for three whole days. Nevertheless, I was very contented. I loved Father Bonneville sincerely. I loved good Jeanette, too, sincerely; but with another sort of love—rather, I suspect, with that peculiar kind of affection with which a child regards a doll, the head of which has been knocked upon the door till it has neither nose nor eyes. Assuredly I had not deprived the good housekeeper of those serviceable features, but I had misused her tenderness, and teazed her till I loved devotedly that which I teazed. I loved them both, then, and well I might; for two better people never existed.
The reader, perhaps, may ask, “are we to have nothing but good people in this book?”
Let him wait a little. We shall find their foil presently, and pray do not let any one fall into the mistake of supposing that there is any thing inherently monotonous in goodness. Far from it. It has as infinite variety as evil. Its scope is as extensive, from the most sublime deed of devotion or self-sacrifice, to the smallest act of kindness. Nay, it is more vast than evil; for I cannot but think that goodness embraces all things, while evil only touches a part. It is because the mind of man is too small to comprehend the magnitude of goodness that he fancies it limited, as a child gazing at the sky, thinks that there is a blue wall to space. It is because his mind is too dim and feeble, too much accustomed to struggle with impurer things, that he cannot reach its heights or penetrate its depths, and conceive the infinite variety it affords. The salmon can leap up the cataract, or dart against the current of the turbid stream, but he cannot soar into the sky like the eagle, and at one glance take in a world below. The most sublime thing in the whole universe is goodness, and it is the sweetest too.
Happy, right happy do I believe myself to have been thus, in youth, associated with two such good and kindly beings. At that period of life, the plastic nature of the child receives, in a great degree, its future shape and form. The impressions are deep, and, once hardened, ineffaceable: the character receives its bent, the mind its tone and coloring, and although I may have done many things in life which I regret, and which they could not have approved, yet their goodness has been always in my memory as a light-house to show me the way across the dark and struggling waters of life, and to welcome me home to port, however far I may have wandered astray.
I cannot conceive any greater blessing can be bestowed on youth than the companionship of the really good. I speak not of the stiff and rigid. I speak not of the harsh and the severe. I speak not even of the self-denying, the sober, and the circumspect. The example of anchorite or puritan, never effected much upon the heart of youth. But I speak of the really good, and they are not good if they are not gentle; for the reverse of gentleness is wrong. I speak of the good who learn from the fountain of all goodness to be happy, and to make happy; and who know that it is part of the commandment, to enjoy.
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