Tales for Young and Old

by Various

'I should be very sorry, now that I know it.'

'You would, then, only spare those trees from the fire which have come under your own particular notice: this is too common a case. Would it give you more pleasure to see this one burning?' said Monsieur D'Ambly, as he showed him another, divided into four enormous trunks, which shot from the same root.

'No, indeed. Look, it makes quite an arbour. Papa, some day when we have more time we will come and sit here, shall we not?'

'So, then, here are two that you would spare from the conflagration of the forest.'

'Oh, if I could but see it on fire, what a fine effect it would have from the windows of the château; I should think only of my two favourite oaks that I should be so sorry to see burning.'

'But all those you see equally deserve to become favourites, and those you cannot see are quite as fine; they have each in their different forms something that would interest you as much as your two favourite oaks, the poplar, or our lime-tree.'

'I do believe that if I were to think of every particular tree that composed a forest, it would take away all wish to see it burned.'

'That shows the necessity of consideration, my son, to avoid the risk of forming unreasonable wishes, to put them in practice, perhaps, when you grow up. You will probably never have a forest to burn, but you may have men to conduct: just think what might be the consequence of your forgetting that a district, a town, a community, is composed of individuals, as you just now forgot that a forest is composed of trees.'

'Ah, papa, in such a case I could not forget myself.'

'I knew some years ago,' said Monsieur D'Ambly, 'a very good, but rather obstinate man, of the name of De Marne. He had a quarrel with the director of a hospital established in a small town on one of his estates. The greater part of the property of the hospital was situated on this estate, and dependent on it, as was then the custom—that is to say, the hospital only held these lands on condition of paying certain rents to Monsieur de Marne, and of receiving two patients at his option. This right he held in consequence of his ancestors having given these lands to the hospital, and it descended to all the proprietors of the estate. The director began to dispute with Monsieur de Marne about the payment of the rent, and maintained that he bad no right to send more than one patient to the hospital. Monsieur de Marne was exceedingly angry, and a lawsuit was the consequence; and it so happened that the person employed by Monsieur de Marne, in searching the papers which had been sent to him to prove his right, discovered, or thought he had discovered, that the ground which had occasioned the lawsuit belonged to Monsieur de Marne, and not to the hospital, because, said he, the ancestors of Monsieur de Marne only gave it for a certain time, and on certain conditions which had not been fulfilled; so that Monsieur de Marne ought to take possession of it. This would be the ruin of the hospital. The day Monsieur de Marne received this intelligence he was delighted; and the more so, as he had just learned that one of the patients whom he had sent to the hospital had died, in consequence of a relapse from having been discharged too soon. His widow, who was left destitute, travelled on foot to Paris, with her youngest child on her back, to implore the assistance of Monsieur de Marne. She cried bitterly as she related the last words of her husband, who said, when he was dying, "If Monsieur de Marne had been here, he would have had me kept in the hospital, and I should have recovered."