Macte animo, generose puer![113]
This brattish erudition made my enemy laugh in spite of himself; he suggested an armistice: we concluded a treaty; I agreed to refer the matter to the arbitration of the principal. Without giving his award in my favour, the principal consented to cancel the punishment which I had refused to take. When the excellent priest pronounced his acquittal, I pressed my lips to the sleeve of his gown with so great a display of heartfelt gratitude that he could not refrain from giving me his blessing. Thus ended the first combat which restored to me the honour which has been the idol of my life and which has so often cost me my repose, my pleasure, and my fortune.
Holidays at Combourg.
The holidays in the course of which I entered upon my twelfth year were sad ones. The Abbé Leprince accompanied me to Combourg. I went out only with my tutor; we took long rambles together. He was dying of consumption, and was silent and melancholy; I myself was not much livelier. We walked for hours without saying a word. One day we lost our way in the woods; M. Leprince turned to me and asked:
"Which way shall we go?"
I answered without hesitation:
"The sun is setting; it is now striking the window in the big tower; let us go that way."
M. Leprince the same evening told the incident to my father: the future traveller showed himself in that decision. Many a time, when I saw the sun set in the forests of America, have I recalled the woods of Combourg: my memories are echoes one of the other.
The Abbé Leprince wanted them to give me a horse; but according to my father's notions, the only thing a naval officer need know how to steer was his ship. I was reduced, therefore, to riding two fat coach-horses or a big piebald by stealth. The latter was not, like Turenne's Pie, one of those steeds which the Romans called desultorii equi[114] and trained to aid their masters; it was a moon-eyed Pegasus, which overreached in trotting, and bit my legs when I set it at a ditch. I never cared much about horses, although I have led the life of a Tartar; and, contrary to the effect which my early training should have produced, I ride with an elegant rather than a firm seat.
A tertiary fever, the germs of which I had brought with me from the marshes of Dol, rid me of M. Leprince. A quack passed through the village; my father, who did not believe in doctors, believed in charlatans: he sent for the empiric, who undertook to cure me in twenty-four hours. He returned the next day, in a green, gold-laced coat, a huge, powdered wig, wide ruffles of dirty muslin, false diamonds on his fingers, worn black satin breeches, bluey-white silk stockings, and shoes with enormous buckles. He pulled back my curtains, felt my pulse, made me put out my tongue, jabbered a few words with an Italian accent on the necessity for purging me, and gave me a little piece of burnt sugar to eat. My father approved of the treatment, for he maintained that all sickness came from indigestion, and that for every kind of ill you should purge your man till the blood came.