The half hour before lunch was spent by the children in showing their pets. A prime favorite with them just now is a little Newfoundland puppy, which has quite dethroned in their affections an old shepherd dog, who, as Zi-Zi relates, “came one day and liked us so much that she has never left us.” Another pet of whom a great deal is made is an African monkey which Matthew brought home from the Soudan. It is called Bou-Bou, and when it is scolded it hides its face in its hands. It is quite tame, and runs about without a chain.
Just before lunch the children set about picking violets, each a bunch. This they do every day. One is for Charles at Mazas, another for Madame de Lesseps, but the sweetest is for the old father to wear in his buttonhole at lunch, which is the only meal he takes with the family. The child whose bouquet is worn by the father is the proudest child in Berry that day.
I could not refrain from a movement of the most painful surprise when, after a few moments spent in the drawing-room, I was invited by Madame de Lesseps into the room where her husband sat. I have known M. de Lesseps for many years, and though the last time that I saw him he was already under the influence of the sorrow of defeat—it was just after he had been called before a magistrate, for examination—my recollection of him had always been as of a man full of the most surprising vitality and high spirits, keen, bright, energetic, defying the wear of time, a man of eternal youth in spite of his white hairs. I remembered him last, erect, with clear voice and flashing eyes, and now I saw him huddled together in a chair, a wrap about his knees, nodding his head as under sleep, pale, inert, and with all the life gone out of his eyes. Behind him stood a large screen tapestried with red stuff, against which the waxen whiteness of his face and hands stood out in strong relief. How old he looked, whom age had seemed to spare so long! For the most part the head drooped forward on his chest, but now and then he raised it listlessly and let his eyes wander round the room, or across the panes on to the fields beyond. There was rarely recognition in his glance; mostly a look of unalterable sadness—of wonder, it may be, at the terrible hazards of life. Yet, when now and then one of the children, who were crowding about his chair, pressed his hand or kissed his cheek or said some words of endearment to him, the smile which was one of his characteristics came over his face, and for a brief moment he seemed himself again. Himself again—that is to say, in the goodness and great-heartedness which more than all he has ever done for France merited for him the name of the great Frenchman. For greatness of heart has always been the keynote of the character of Ferdinand de Lesseps. It was the secret of the indescribable seduction which he exercised over everyone who came near him, from emperor to laborer. It was to this quality of his that M. Renan, albeit a sceptic himself, rendered such signal homage in the speech in which he welcomed M. de Lesseps to the French Academy on the day of his admittance.
“You were good to all who came,” said M. Renan; “you made them feel 88 that their past would be effaced and that a new life lay before them. In exchange you only asked them to share your enthusiasm in the work which you had devoted to the interest of France. You held that most people can amend if only one will forget their past. One day a whole gang of convicts arrived at Panama and took work at the canal. The Austrian consul demanded that they should be handed over to him; but you delayed giving satisfaction to his request, and at the end of some weeks the Austrian consulate was fully occupied in remitting home to Austria, to their families, or, it may be, to their victims, the moneys which these outcasts whom you had transformed into honest workmen were earning with the work of their hands. You have declared your faith in humanity. You have convinced yourself and tried to convince others that men are loyal and good if only they have the wherewithal to live. It is your opinion that it is only hunger that makes men bad. ‘Never,’ said you in one of your lectures, ‘have I had cause for complaint against any of the workmen, although I have employed outcasts, pariahs, and convicts. Work has redeemed even the most dishonest. I have never been robbed, not even of a handkerchief. It is a fact which I have proved, that men can be brought to do anything by showing them kindness and by persuading them that they are working in a cause of universal interest.’ Thus you have made green again what seemed withered for ever and aye. You have given, in a century of unbelief, a startling proof of the efficacy of faith.”
MADAME DE LESSEPS IN 1880.